


Hidden Depths

by cazflibs



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-01
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:56:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazflibs/pseuds/cazflibs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer and Lister are paired together on a CANARY mission. However, the bickering soon has to stop when their lives are put in danger</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. CANARIES

**Author's Note:**

> The fic that was 7 years in the making. That's right - I started it in 2002, finished it in 2009. FAIL. Ah well, completed it eventually!

Lister was in a foul mood.

If there was one thing that he couldn't stand - apart from burnt toast, early mornings and Thursdays - it was Arnold Judas Rimmer. Unfortunately, his day so far had consisted of all four of these pet hates rolled into one as he stood, open-mouthed and appalled, after hearing who he was going to be paired with for the latest CANARY mission. 

There didn't seem much point in arguing with Ackerman. Once the decision had been made then it had been bloody well set in stone, and Lister knew full well that the decision was deliberate. The guards took great pleasure in the pair's annoyance at continually being shoved together. In fact, they even had a bet as to whether their simmering frustration would boil over into either full-out fisticuffs or an awkward homosexual encounter. The stakes were quite high, riding currently on two-hundred dollarpounds on the latter.

The taller man beside him, obviously similarly pissed off with the outcome, was feebly attempting to argue against the decision with all the wit and eloquence of Jessica Simpson. Lister couldn't help but allow a grin to surface to his face. If Rimmer pushed his luck, he may end up having his family jewels pulped by one of the larger Neanderthals that passed as guards in the Tanks. At least their mission together may be conducted in blissful silence.

"But, sir!" Rimmer implored, in a whine whose tone, pitch and irritation level reached the equivalent of scratching fingernails down a blackboard. "How come I have to be paired with a man who smells like an elephant's jockstrap?"

Lister snapped out of his silence. "Hey, that's not fair!" He thrusted a turmeric-stained finger at Rimmer. "That's slander, that is."

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Oh please, Lister," he snorted. "When was the last time you even had a shower?"

A jet of air escaped Lister's lips as his eyes scrolled upwards to the ceiling, attempting to recall a feasible date. He honestly couldn't remember.

"Lister, if you have to consult the mental diary then it's been too long."

"Smeg off, Rimmer."

In the row behind them, Cat and Kryten stood patiently as the bickering continued; the former attempting to sneak a look at his gorgeous reflection with his pocket mirror (and deciding whether yellow really was his colour) and the latter meticulously programming his psi-scanner. Kochanski, however, was less than nonchalant.

"Look at those two!" she cried. "What are they? Twenty-eight going on twelve?" She folded her arms petulantly. "If I've been hauled out of bed at 5am and sent on a suicide mission to rescue a lost battalion without a chance to do my make-up or my hair then the least that those two can do is stop bickering so we can back in time for _Neighbours_."

"I don't think we should have a problem ma'am," Kryten soothed. Then, looking back to his data, added under his breath, "With a face and PMT like _that_, all we'd need to do is send you in and the creature would run a mile."

The battalion's hushed bickering was soon silenced with a swift and ear-buggering smash of Ackerman's truncheon against the rail of the metal staircase. The sound resonated around the hollow, metallic room before dying away into eerie silence. "If you prefer it, Rimmer," he purred, dangerously, "we could arrange for Ball-Crusher Boris here to accompany you this morning."

"Erm…" Rimmer bit his lip. Ball-crushing or spending eight hours with Lister. The former did sound surprisingly tempting.

To illustrate the issue, Ball-Crusher Boris stepped forwards out of the shadows. Boris would have seemed a nice, jolly sort of fellow if he hadn't have looked like a burly Yukon bear-trapper with the sanity margin the width of a gnat's wing. Rimmer had to admit that the conversation potential with this man did not look as if it would sweep across the cultural palate. The sound as Boris cracked his almighty knuckles jump-started both Rimmer's voice-box and his common sense.

Rimmer managed a weak smile as he clasped his hands together. "Actually, I think that pairing up with Lister might not be such a bad idea after all, sir."

Ackerman smiled. Boris looked disappointed. "Now everybody get your arses into that shuttle, triple-speed," Ackerman barked. "You'll get your full debriefing once you're in orbit of the planet."

As the CANARIES filed out, Rimmer turned to the nearest guard. "Will we be getting any decent food supplies?" he asked, winningly.

Rimmer was answered with a hard smack round the head. There's a saying in the Tank. 'Stupid question, painful answer.'


	2. Fall

The CANARIES stepped out of the shuttle and were immediately hit by the piercingly hot sunshine, which seemed to slice through their uniforms like glass. Not for the first time, Rimmer mentally cursed whoever thought it was a good idea for them to be wearing a thick jacket, padded vest and ship-issue steel-capped boots in 105. F temperatures. He would later be thankful for such small mercies.

Kryten pulled back from the rest of the group and gestured for the others to do the same. Lister recognised the worried look in Kryten's eye that he always tried to hide in potentially dangerous situations, and silently realised that this was going to be no stroll along the beach. Even when _Starbug_ was sent into a fiery, spinning death-dive, Kryten would be trying to put a positive spin on things and encouraging a few choruses of _Achy Breaky Heart_.

"Sirs, ma'am," he began softly, "I was just thinking that you may wish to know that there is a teensy little problem to watch out for after we split up that you may wish to consider in order to make your time on this planet a tad more comfortable."

The four of them blinked twice. Lister scratched his head carefully. "As in 'we may be in danger of running out of factor 25 sunblock' sort of _teensy_, or 'we may encounter a seven-foot tall armour-plated, alien killing-machine that may be inclined to rip our head off' sort of _teensy_?"

Missing the sarcasm completely, Kryten calmly shook his head. "Neither of those little conundrums, sir, no." He tapped a cubed finger on the readout of the psi-scan. "I'm getting readings that the sub-ground level of the planet is in fact a network of caverns, making some ground areas of the planet highly unstable. This would probably suggest the reason that the battalion got separated and lost contact with _Red Dwarf_."

Rimmer visibly relaxed. "So there's no danger of encountering aforementioned killing-machine?" he asked.

Kryten shook his head. "Not according to the psi-scan, sir."

Rimmer rubbed his hands together and smiled brightly. "Well then, people. Let's get on with this little stroll and be back in time for lunch."

"I second that," Cat purred, "I wanna get back on that shuttle and get in some precious snoozing time." He hoisted his heavy bag, laden with beauty products, onto his back with graceful agility and headed west. A grumbling Kochanski followed, attempting to comb her gloved fingers through the tangled mane that was her hair and continued to growl about missing a certain Australian soap.

Kryten sighed. Perhaps a few choruses of _Bye Bye Baby_ would provide sufficient entertainment for her. He leaned over to Lister and gestured with his radio transmitter. "By the way, sir, if you wish to contact us rather than using the group's channel, then we'll be on channel three."

He nodded thankfully. "See you at the 13:00 rendezvous." Lister turned and watched Rimmer already strolling east, humming a number from _Peter and the Wolf_. "If I don't lose my sanity first," he added.

The pair walked together in silence for almost two hours. The terrain warped and waned in the heat haze, hypnotic in its distortion of distance and time. Lister puffed and panted two steps behind as he watched Rimmer, still keeping the pace that he started out with, before finally giving up, spluttering to a stop like a run-down Skoda. 

It took Rimmer a further five paces before he realised that the second set of footsteps crunching into the dry, gritty sand had stopped. Curious, he turned back to see Lister sinking to the ground and fishing out his water bottle from his bag. He didn't join him. Instead, he frowned, despite the sweat that marinated his body and the sun that insisted on stewing him in his own juices.

"What are you doing?" he asked, with feigned surprise. He was in fact glad that it had been Lister to initiate the first rest-break rather than himself. He'd kept pushing himself, hoping to appear the fitter specimen of the two.

Lister wiggled the water bottle playfully as if explaining something slowly to a small child. "I'm having a break and drinking some water because, strangely enough, I don't fancy passing out."

Rimmer folded his arms. "You can't need a break already," he snorted. His parched mouth and swimmy head screamed the opposite.

Lister shook his head. "Rimmer, don't be an idiot. It's not weakness, it's common bloody sense." He noticed the rivers of sweat that trickled down Rimmer's face, pulling his usually frizzy hair into wet curls on his face. "It looks like you need it too."

Rimmer's raised his eyebrow and ran his gloved hand slowly across his forehead in what he hoped would be an innocent and non-inspired gesture. Relenting, he too pulled off his backpack, thumped it down gratefully on the scorched, hard ground and slumped back on his haunches.

Lister peeled off his gloves and padded vest with difficulty. Seeing this, mid-gulp of water, Rimmer half-choked. "What are you doing? The rules say you're supposed to keep it on at all times for protection!"

Lister shot him a look that could pierce rock. "Sod the bloody rules, Rimmer. I'm not baking to death in order to follow regulations." He swigged hard from his bottle once more. It felt dangerously light yet he ignored it. They'd be back at the rendezvous in just over a couple of hours anyway.

"But what if something attacks us?" Rimmer implored. "We're supposed to be ready at all times!"

The two of them scanned the surrounding landscape. There was nothing but sand and rock as far as the eye could see. Rimmer growled inwardly at the stupidity of the remark.

"Believe me, Rimmer. If something was approaching to attack us, we'd know about it at least five minutes before, wouldn't you say?" Lister smirked. "Plenty of time to show off your RoadRunner act, don't worry."

Rimmer frowned. "All right, no need to score below the belt." He swigged from his water bottle angrily. Why couldn't Lister see that rules were there for his own protection? All right, a load of them were pretty stupid; suicidal, one might define this particular rule in such baking heat. But if it was down to a choice between not having adequate defensive protection if they got attacked and getting a bit hot and sweaty, Rimmer knew which option suited him better.

The silence between them was broken as the radio transmitter nestled in the side pocket of Rimmer's backpack crackled urgently into life. _"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Important discovery made in your vicinity, over."_

Lister and Rimmer exchanged anxious glances before Rimmer pulled out the radio and spoke nervously into it. "Canary Nest this is Team D, what's the problem? Over."

There was a buzz of strange static before a reply came. _"Team D, there has been a strange chemical gas detected in your vicinity, do you copy? Over."_

The pair automatically clamped a hand over their mouth and nose in panic. "What's the procedure?" Rimmer mumbled through his hand. "Where's it coming from?" There was a pause. "Oh, over."

_"We think that the most likely cause is that -- "_ More strange static. _" -- you guys stink!"_

The pair blinked at one another before Lister released the hand from his mouth and snatched the radio from Rimmer and barked into it. "Kill Crazy! Is that you?"

The strange static came louder than before. It was laughter.

Rimmer released his mouth, shock and anger etched on his features. "What the hell?!"

"For smeg's sake, man, isn't a joke!" Lister yelled. He wiped away the beads of sweat that somehow stood out cold on his brow. Rimmer growled audibly and sank back heavily until his head cracked against the hard-baked sand. He hit it repeatedly.

Lister flicked the switch on the transmitter, almost breaking it off and tossed it onto the ground between the two of them. "Bastards," he snarled.

The ground felt like a clay-oven against his head as Rimmer let out a forceful sigh. He stared up at the orange-tinged sky. "Maybe I could just stay here for the rest of eternity," he mused.

"Yeah," came the reply. "Do us all a bloody favour."

Rimmer was about to retort with a shot of verbal venom when a noise purring in his ears made him stop. It was a sort of distant rumbling that seemed to resonate from some unseen source. He pushed his weight up, leant on his arms and listened. "Do you hear that?" he asked.

Lister narrowed his eyes as he listened. "Yeah," he said distantly, as he concentrated on trying to find its source. "Where's it coming from?"

Rimmer could almost feel the energy buzzing underneath his hands that rested on the arid ground. His eyes widened slightly. "Oh God," he mumbled. "Don't tell me it's the –"

An ugly crack suddenly thrust its way through the parched earth between them. The two men scrabbled back instinctively, sending a network of jagged cracks sprawling out underneath them. Lister froze. The more they moved, the more the cracks widened.

"Rimmer!" he cried out. "Keep still for smeg's sake or the whole bloody thing's gonna collapse!"

Rimmer reluctantly obeyed, still on all fours. "Oh great plan, Lister. We'll just stay here for a few hours, shall we? Admire the bloody view?!" More needling cracks stretched out from beneath his hands. "Oh smegging hell -- " he whined.

Lister spotted the radio in the five-metre space between them. "Rimmer, listen!" he called, trying to keep his movements to a minimum. "You keep still. I'm gonna try and get the radio so we can get some help, okay?" 

He shuffled forward agonisingly slowly, moving inch by careful inch in a painfully slow crawl. A fresh burst of cracks opened up around his hands and he froze. It was no use.

"We're outta options, man!" Lister relented. "We're just gonna have to go for it and leg it away from the unstable site!"

Rimmer whimpered as the cracks from his hands extended towards his feet. "The whole thing will go!" he cried.

"It's gonna go if we stay put!" Lister reasoned. He locked eyes with his cellmate. "After 'three', ready?" 

Rimmer nodded quickly. Lister swallowed.

"One –"

A huge groan burst up from the ground as the entire site collapsed, sending Lister and Rimmer tumbling into the dark, cavernous void.


	3. Awakening

Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat stumbled the last few metres towards the shuttle and collapsed in a less than dignified heap onto the baking sand. Cat begun to pull off his gloves and padded vest thankfully with the others slowly following suit, hoping that their late arrival would be less than conspicuous. No such hope. The seated group were suddenly plunged into shadow, rather graciously in such horrifically hot conditions, as Hutchins ample frame towered over them. Hutchins had become the new squadron leader, replacing Knot after his sudden, unfortunate and curious death, the likes of which the Dwarfers were less than keen to elaborate on.

"You're late," growled the shadow.

The Cat flashed Hutchins a winning smile. "Sorry buddy," he replied, cheerfully. "If I didn't have to stick to my strict preening timetable -"

The remainder of the Cat's sentence was lost in muffling as Kochanski subtly encouraged him to stop talking by leaping onto him and using all of her upper body weight to force his head into the sand. With the Cat, it either had to be a grand gesture or nothing at all. Kryten adopted the Cat's smile and pursued a different, less suicidal tactic.

"Please accept our sincerest apologies, sir," he began, with a voice that could melt butter. "Adverse weather conditions in our particular sector rendered concurrent tasks impossible to complete within a particular timeframe. We therefore conclude that our thirty-minute delay was the result of variables that we cannot effectively envisage. Our apologies once more, sir."

Kryten smiled subtly as he registered the blank look on Hutchins' face. Vocabulary observation over the past two weeks had revealed that Hutchins' brain seemed to face meltdown and require rebooting if faced with a string of polysyllabic utterances in quick succession. In other terms, using loads of big words when talking to him would often shag out his brain to the point that he would drop the subject and move on.

Hutchins blinked. "Well, make sure it doesn't happen again," he concluded less than certainly, wondering whether he had won or lost the argument.

Kochanski released the breath that she had been holding in a tired sigh. "So we're finally ready to get out of here?" she asked, before realising that she was still lying on the Cat's head and not breathing for forty seconds was considered less than healthy. She released him, reluctantly.

After a seven-second mental reboot, Hutchins finally spoke. "Nope. We're still a team down. We've lost radio contact with Team D. Haven't heard from 'em for hours." His massive boots crunched through the gritty sand towards Murphy, the team leader in radio communications.

The Cat spat out a mouthful of sand. "Team D? Isn't that – "

Kochanski locked Kryten's arm in a tight grip. "Lister and Rimmer are still out there?" she cried.

Kryten shook his head. "I don't understand, ma'am, they should be – "

It was then that the group finally heard the repetitive one-sided radio conversation that had been continuing long before their arrival.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

"Team D, this is Canary Nest. Do you read me?"

Static.

Murphy turned to face Hutchins, who had his fists thrust on his non-existent waist. Kochanski felt her heart plummet into her stomach as Hutchins shook his head. The situation was far from rosy. She turned back to share her worry with Kryten, but he had already stood up and walked away from the group. Hunched over his own radio transmitter, he discreetly changed to channel three, desperately trying to gain contact.

"Please, sirs. Please let us know you're all right," he pleaded in an escalating high-pitched whine. "Just let me know that you're safe, Mister Lister. For me?"

But Kryten was met with the same eerie reply. Silence woven with static.

Seeing the Cat with nose in the air, trying to catch a scent or distant noise and finding nothing, Kochanski surveyed the landscape with watery eyes. "Please be safe, Dave," she breathed.

******

Slowly emerging from the dark recesses of unconsciousness, Lister's mind was less than pleased to find that reality proved to be similarly dark. It had done all this work, trying to restore neural pathways to full working order and look what reality had to offer – nothing but the dim surroundings of an underground cave, which was hardly fitting for a nice, comfortable Saturday morning lie-in…

Lister silenced his brain's verbal diarrhoea and pressed 're-wind' on his addled thought processes. _Hang on_, he thought. _'Underground cave'_?

It was then that he realised that a) he was not having a comfortable lie-in, b) this was not the Tank, and perhaps most important of all, c) this was not a Saturday, but a Thursday. Thursdays were always bad days. Waking up with amnesia after having their memories erased because of Lise Yates? Thursday. Attack of the Polymorph? Thursday. His wedding day? Thursday. The latter case would have been the happiest day of his life, if he hadn't have been married to a bride that had the looks and personal hygiene of a male Tibetan yak.

Lister rolled over slowly and groaned as he felt a sharp aching across one side of his ribcage, politely informing him that he'd bruised his ribs fairly badly. He half-sniggered at the irony of a vague memory that fleetingly tickled his mind. He'd taken his padded vest off before the ground collapsed. He applauded his mental recall but smacked his stupidity round the head in equal measure. Rimmer had been right for a change.

The temporary amnesia tossed him another bone. Rimmer had fallen too.

"Rimmer?" he called out painfully, his bruised ribs scratched along his words like a sharp key along the side of a Mercedes. No reply came.

Lister pulled himself roughly to his feet and immediately yelped and sank to the floor once more. His right ankle was busted too. He tried to shrug it off. Bruised ribs and a busted ankle weren't too bad for such a fall. His mind's eye flashed back to when he'd been trying to stop a gang of blokes in their late twenties from stealing his first car back in Liverpool all those thousands of years ago. He'd ended up in intensive care for over a week. But he was still here.

Despite the pain, he hauled himself upright and scanned the cave as far as the lack of light would allow. Back before the crew got wiped, his safety harness had snapped and he'd plummeted into the cargo bay. He'd broken his spine in three places and spent six weeks in traction. But he was still here.

It was then that he found Rimmer a few metres away, lying face down and blanketed with a fine layer of sand and dust. He'd plummeted into the underground caves of a dangerously unfamiliar planet. But he was still here. 

Lister carefully rolled Rimmer onto his back and felt his neck for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief. 

_They_ were still here.


	4. SOS

Lister fished his lucky silver Zippo from his right-hand trouser pocket and with a well-rehearsed flick of the wrist, a small yet hopeful flame sparked into life. He held it towards Rimmer's head, throwing his face into a wash of dancing light and flickering shadow. A jet of air hissed through Lister's teeth as he saw a bloody gash start near the top of Rimmer's left temple and flare up and open into a deep, grime-smeared graze that disappeared into his hairline. _Nasty_, thought Lister, _though probably not as bad as it looks_. Once the blood had been washed from his forehead and hair, he'd probably only need butterfly stitches to help it on its way to recovery, three sutures tops.

He ran his hand up and down Rimmer's limbs to check for breaks. Finding none, he sat back on his haunches and sighed. He'd probably wake up with one hell of a headache, and a grumpy Rimmer wasn't a quiet Rimmer. Lister pushed himself slowly back to his feet and decided to spend the blissful silence searching for his backpack that had been wrenched from his back around halfway down the fall. It was vital that he located it for their survival. It contained his fags.

After a couple of minutes of unsuccessful searching, Lister heard a weak groan come from the direction of Rimmer's body. Lister cursed silently. He'd hoped to at least have one cigarette to steady his nerves before having to deal with Rimmer.

A string of muffled expletives was followed by Rimmer's first cohesive sentence. "Turn the smegging light on, Lister, I can't see a bloody thing," he mumbled, eyes still closed.

"If there was one, I'd ask you to bloody well do it yourself, y'lazy git," Lister replied glumly, as he continued to fumble in the darkness for his backpack.

Rimmer moaned and slowly rolled onto his front. After a few moments he tried to push himself upright with stiff arms as he opened his eyes fully for the first time. Scraping his knees forward underneath him so that he could kneel, he held a quivering hand up in front of his face. It was a bit too dark and blurry for his liking.

"I feel a bit spaced," he announced, his speech slurring slightly as he put the blurred hand to the throbbing part of his head.

Lister limped towards Rimmer's hunched, shadowy figure, and crouched down to face him as Rimmer pulled away his hand, his fingertips sticky with congealed blood. "I'm bleeding," he muttered, in a voice a bit too calm to be considered normal.

"You'll be fine," Lister replied vacantly as he flicked open the Zippo once more. He held the flame towards Rimmer's face in inspection. Rimmer blinked rapidly before his eyes adjusted to the light. Despite the light flickering close to his eyes, Lister noticed that Rimmer's pupils remained fully dilated. Most likely some form of mild concussion. "Aren't you the clever one, Rimmer?" Lister grinned. "Landing on your smegging head."

"Smeg off," Rimmer replied weakly as he attempted to stand and promptly decided that sitting was better for the time being.

Lister cocked his head to one side. "Not one of the most original retorts I've heard from you, I must admit," he sniggered. "I'm sure you'll get your bearings and your capacity for insulting me back in a few minutes."

Rimmer frowned at Lister as he walked slowly and awkwardly into the gloom and defiantly attempted to stand once more. He wobbled for a few moments before gaining equilibrium – a definite improvement. He wracked his brains for a verbal comeback but the words toppled and fell over one another as if drunk. "Well, you have the…whatsit…of a…thingy – "

"Rimmer, drop it. The moment hurtled by some time ago now."

"Bugger."

Lister had only hobbled five more steps before he heard a heavy thump and tumble from the darkness in Rimmer's vague direction.

"Oh bloody, buggering hell!"

Lister turned. "Are you all right?" he called out.

There was a pause. "I think I've just found your backpack."

Lister stifled a laugh. "There should be a torch in the side pocket," he smirked. He raised his sightless eyes upwards in the direction that he hoped would lead them out. "Let's see where the smegging hell we are."

There was a fumbling sound and a final _click_ before a fierce beam of light thrust its way through the darkness. Lister followed the beam's path behind him where a steep slope of densely packed sand and stone made up the far wall of the cave. The slope was carpeted with loose sand and grit, presumably the crumbled sand from above. 

As Rimmer stepped towards the slope and leaning forward, threw the beam of light upwards, Lister could see the reason why the two of them hadn't, quite literally, plummeted to their deaths. They would have only free-fallen three or four metres before they hit the tall, steep slope and tumbled down it into this cave. What worried Lister the most was how little light there was. Dark meant deep, and even with the aid of the torch, he could only distantly make out what he hoped was the six-metre wide opening to the planet's surface.

"Ah," was all Rimmer could manage before adding, "this, uh, this doesn't look too promising, does it?"

Lister simply tottered over to his backpack and pulled out the packet of cigarettes. He'd managed to pull one out with his mouth and light it before Rimmer noticed.

"What the smeg are you doing?" Rimmer cried, incredulous.

Lister took the biggest drag he could before replying. "It's a medical, frigging necessity, Rimmer," he mumbled, cigarette balanced precariously between his lips. "I haven't had one since breakfast." Lister pulled the cigarette from his mouth and gave a smoky sigh. "If I don't have one now, I may not be able to convince myself that giving you a fist-related teeth disorder isn't such a good idea."

Wary of the nicotine deprivation-induced violent streak, Rimmer backed down instantly. Instead, he quickly looked at his watch. "Smegging hell, it's almost half-two! We've missed the rendezvous."

Lister flicked off the loose ash impatiently. "I think we have a more than decent excuse, don't you?"

Rimmer rolled his eyes. "I meant that if we've missed the rendezvous then they've probably already started a search for us, right?"

Lister cocked an eyebrow. "With Hutchins in charge? Doubtful. They're never going to find us unless we have – "

Two pairs of eyes lit up simultaneously as they both cried, "the radio transmitter!"

With renewed energy, Rimmer swept the beam of light across the floor, darting it left and right before coming to a sudden halt. "Ah," he uttered, curtly.

"What? You've found it?" Lister stubbed out his cigarette on the nearest stone stalactite. "Send 'em an SOS. They'll track the signal and have us out of here in no time."

Rimmer strode across the cave floor and crouched down. "Which bit do you think we should use to contact them with, eh?" he growled, trying unsuccessfully to suppress his rising frustration. "This pile of broken plastic here or this mangled web of circuitry here?" Rimmer held up tangled knot of wires in the torch beam between his forefinger and thumb before letting them drop to the ground once more.

Lister exhaled forcefully, rubbing his aching eyes. "That makes things interesting, eh?" He replied, philosophically. He didn't even need to look at Rimmer to sense the burning look of disgusted incredulity on his face.

"_Interesting_?" Rimmer seethed. "Try bloody _life-threatening_!" He rubbed a gloved hand down his face in some vain attempt to wipe off the panicked look from his features and sunk, unaware, to an awkward seated position. "I believe we are, what is referred to in the business as, _completely screwed_." The sentence began calmly enough, escalating up the scale, both in speed and pitch, to a plateau of panic.

Lister crouched down beside the ugly twisted pile of shattered plastic and circuitry and began attempts to somehow fix, slot and shove them all together into some form of working order. "Look, don't panic, man. It'll be fine, I promise," he soothed. Inside, a hot flame of anger begged to flare up and out of his mouth, preferably in some form of wonderfully crafted verbal attack. '_Shut the hell up you stupid git'_ would have worked wonders, but was not entirely useful in this particular situation, especially not for keeping the Queen of Panic under control.

Rimmer shook his head violently, a look of muted mania plastered on his face. "Oh no, no, no, Listy. I'm not panicking. This is just shock." A twisted, bitter laugh escaped from his dry lips. "Once I get my map out, get my bearings and find my way from Shock Street to Panic Place, _then I'll start panicking!_" Again, the last part of the sentence squealed upwards into a tone that definitely closely resembled insanity.

Lister ceased his pointless attempt at reviving the radio and stared at Rimmer with narrowed eyes and wrinkled nose, wondering just how hard Rimmer had hit his head. "Are you sure you're all right?" he asked carefully.

Rimmer nodded hard and fast. "Oh yes," he began calmly. "I would be absolutely hunky dory if you'd have put the bloody radio back in my bag where it should have been in the first place."

Lister's features hardened. He could see exactly in which direction this particular conversation was heading. Rimmer and the Blame Thing. "Excuse me?" he asked as calmly as his voice would allow.

Rimmer grabbed a handful of the mangled mess that had been the radio and held it up in the torch light once more in illustration of his argument. "If you had put the radio back in my bag, as opposed to just tossing it on the floor like you do with the majority of your crap, then the radio transmitter wouldn't currently resemble a three-dimensional Picasso, would it?" Rimmer threw down his handful and stared back hard.

"Oh clever old Rimmsy, you've cracked it!" Lister cried in as performative a manner as he could summon. He stood a bit too quickly for his throbbing ankle and threw his arms up wildly. "Obviously I didn't put the radio transmitter back in your bag just to spite you." Lister jabbed a venomous forceful finger directly at Rimmer's face.

"Don't you point that thing at me," Rimmer growled audibly, whilst simultaneously, annoyed and thrown off guard, Rimmer batted away Lister's hand forcefully. Both taken aback by this new step into potentially violent retaliation they merely stared at one another defiantly before letting the situation defuse.

A jet of air snorted down Lister's nose, possibly spurting flame at the same moment. "I need to smoke something," he mumbled before returning to his backpack once more.

Once Lister had swaggered, or perhaps limped, away, Rimmer released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He'd never been particularly good at schoolyard scraps. In fact he'd tend to resemble a teenybopper stuck in the middle of a circle pit at a Slipknot gig. He stood silently, taking the torch with him, and walked slightly unsteadily over to the slope from which they fell. It was a good 70 degrees steep but not completely smooth across the surface. There were a number of small jutting rocks and uneven notches that could double up as hand and foot holds. He turned to the tiny red flare in the gloom that signalled both Lister's position and that he had successfully lit up again.

"We could try climbing back up," he said simply.

The red flare moved closer silently until a figure emerged from the darkness with it. "You reckon?" Lister replied with little enthusiasm as he joined Rimmer and glanced upwards. It looked one hell of a difficult climb, and with his busted ankle the chances looked slim. Hell, the chances would look slim if he was asked to climb a flight of stairs. Even if he were fit and able to scale it, it would be a long and dangerous climb. One misplaced foot, one grab of an unstable rock and down you'd come. Unless…

"Unless we didn't have to climb _all_ the way up," Lister mused.

Rimmer stifled the sarcasm that threatened to hijack his voice box and forced himself to listen. After all, God forbid, Lister may be right. "Okay," he murmured, slowly and carefully, scanning his words for any trace of snide tones, "climb up part of the way and do what exactly?"

Lister bit his lip. "Well if one of us climbed up far enough, both to get a clear shot and within range," he turned his head to face Rimmer's puzzled expression, "we could fire up a distress flare."

Rimmer blinked. "That's a good idea," he eventually replied, expressed more with surprise as opposed to confirmation.

Lister's mildly smug smile fell. "Don't sound too shocked, will you?" he muttered.

Rimmer shook his head, bemused. "No, sorry. It's just – " After an awkward pause he dropped the rest of the sentence and strolled down a different tack after a less than subtle clearing of the throat. "Let's do it then," he said brightly.

The two men stared at one another in silence. Neither of them moved. After at least ten seconds of muted conversing through expectant gazes, Rimmer's eyebrows leapt up and clung to one another for comfort. "Me?!"

"Of course _you_, ya smeghead. Who else?" he snorted, "Ray Shanker?"

Rimmer frowned. "Who the hell is Ray Shanker?"

Lister rolled his eyes. "You must know Ray Shanker! Zero-Gee football player? Highest scorer in the – " He paused. "Look, it doesn't matter right now. What matters is that we need to let them know where we are so we can smegging well get out of here and I can't scale a smegging slope with a busted smegging ankle, can I!"

Lister noticed that Rimmer was leaning away from him almost imperceptibly. Eventually, Rimmer sighed. "Fine. I'll try," he huffed. "But you owe me one," he said, wagging a matriarchal finger at Lister as he fetched two flares from Rimmer's backpack.

"Next time I'm stuck in the depths of Hell with you, I'll get the first round in, okay?" Lister shoved the flares into Rimmer's hand, Rimmer handing him the torch with the other. "Now get your arse up there," he added for good measure.

Rimmer shot him a look that could turn men to stone and tucking the flares between his padded vest and jacket, accepted the linked hands positioned on Lister's knee as a boost. Lister pushed him up as hard as he could and grabbing the first feasible handhold, Rimmer began scaling the slope nervously. Trying to think of anything but his terrible fear of heights after reaching around twenty metres high, Rimmer forced a weak smile as he continued to pick his way carefully upwards.

"A Claret would be nice," he called down as he reached out for another handhold, which unfortunately turned out to be a rather stubborn rock that refused to hold his weight. The rock cracked out of the slope and tumbled downwards, pulling with it a collection of loose dirt and grit. Throwing his weight instinctively back towards the previous handhold, he gripped onto it with all his might and remained stock still, vowing never to move again for the rest of eternity.

He heard a voice call up from below. "Shit, Rimmer, are you okay?"

"Dandy!" he called back with as much sarcasm as he could inject into one word.

Lister shook his head. If Rimmer couldn't get much further up, the flare was in danger of ricocheting against the walls, starting off another rockslide, which could bury them for good. Rimmer knew this too, but the dirt was beginning to get more and more unstable the further up he climbed. It was now or never.

Leaning forward and using his torso to support his upper body weight, Rimmer pulled off his gloves with his teeth and fumbled for the first flare. Fishing out the first, he pointed it up and aimed in what he hoped would be the centre of the opening to the planet's surface. Satisfied with the aim, he turned his head away and pulled. The flare screamed upwards, and to Rimmer's surprise, actually managed to bounce its way up and out of the distant hole.

"Fan-smegging-tastic! It's out!" He choked happily through the smoke. "It got out!"

Lister punched the air with his fist. "She riiiiiiiiiiiiiiides!" He did a celebration jig as far as his ankle would allow. "Good job, man. Fire the other one to make sure they get the message to get us the smeg out of here."

Rimmer carefully set up the second flare, trying to remember how he secured the first decent aim in his entire life. A mixture of empty prayer and a hell of a lot of beginner's luck was the most likely cocktail. Yet just as he turned his head and released the second flare, the small foothold that had supported both of his feet for several minutes suddenly gave way. 

Caught off guard, the flare was fired askew as Rimmer yelled out in surprise, dropping the empty canister in order to scrabble for a new handhold as he slipped and skidded down the slope on his front. Securing a particularly densely packed dirt handhold some ten metres from the ground, he ducked his head down quickly as a shower of loose dirt, sand and grit rained down on his helpless frame.

A voice called to him, muffled, as if it were speaking through glass. "Rimmer, get down! The whole thing's gonna go!"

His entire body quivering with shock, Rimmer peered down to see Lister frantically waving at him. Tipping his head upwards slowly once more, he could see the dust clouds descending as the distant opening turned collapsed in on itself and tumbled towards him.

_No time to climb down_, screamed his instinct. _You want to live? Let go. Now!_

Rimmer wanted to live. Yes indeedy. Death may have been all well and good for his other self, but not for him. He let go.

Lister watched helplessly as Rimmer slipped, scrabbled and tumbled down the remainder of the slope. Gathering him up almost as soon as he landed at the bottom, Lister hauled him to his feet and stumbled as fast as they both could muster further into the cave. Without slowing their pace, Lister leant down to snatch his backpack from the floor with his free hand and staggered into the dizzying maze of rock that snaked its way underneath the planet's surface.

As the monstrous load of hard-baked sand and loose stone finally thundered down into the small rock opening where they had once been laying, the pair threw themselves to the ground, hands and arms thrust desperately on heads in protection, praying that they had stumbled far enough into the protection of the rock cave.

As the terrible rumbling gave its final roar and slowly died away in a distant echo, Lister glanced back and immediately wished he hadn't. Their primary method of escape had completely collapsed inwards as the wound that they had left on the surface was healed; re-born as an inconspicuous looking sand dune to the passer-by.

Filthy, blood-stained hands still tightly gripped the curls of his hair as Rimmer let out a few jagged breaths, sobbing in relief.

Lister turned his gaze towards the maze of rock, their new mode of escape, and allowed the single word that he could think of in such a situation to tumble from his dry, dusty lips.

"Smeg."


	5. Lost

Two hours had elapsed since the original 13:00 rendezvous. 

And for the last two hours, Murphy and Hutchins had taken it in turns to continue to radio Team D. However, the one-sided conversation was doing very little in convincing that there was going to be a fruitful conclusion. 

Kryten's cubed fingers drummed nervously on his chest plate. He was all too aware of the search protocol for missing CANARIES after having sped-read through the thousand-page manual they'd each received when they'd first signed up. He'd found that it was a mostly useless document, most likely deliberately designed to be so long and tedious that the CANARIES didn't bother reading it. Indeed, he knew that they had burned at least two copies when they'd been stuck on the SSS Silverberg with Cassandra, huddling around it to drink coffee, and that Mister Lister used his as a footstool in his cell. 

Yet in his through reading of the manual, Kryten had discovered that whoever had written it had deliberately hidden the somewhat vital paragraphs in between the lengthy chapters on stamp collecting in the 20th Century. The somewhat vital paragraphs that briefly mentioned a few stomach-churning death experiences that the insurance _didn't_ cover, such as being drowned, tortured, beaten, crushed, electrocuted and eaten. 

It also mentioned that after being missing for a mere two hours and if you were believed to be deceased, there was no obligation for the CANARY leaders to search for you.

Kochanski had been absently tapping the lid of her water flask against her teeth, staring across the sands, unseeing, when she realised that Murphy and Hutchins had fallen silent. There was no static, no high-pitched whine from the transmitter; the only sound came from the hushed chatter and chuckles from the other CANARIES sat outside the transport ship. She turned to the pair, who were beginning to pack up the equipment, shaking their heads.

"Such a shame," Murphy muttered, non-committal.

"Indeed," Hutchins echoed, his voice devoid of all emphasis, "big shame." He gathered up the wires with suspicous enthusiasm. "Well, let's get back to Red Dwarf," he shifted with the grating of gears, "I hear it's Shepherd's Pie for lunch today." He licked his fat pink lips and grinned to himself as he revelled in the plan of eating his own share before confiscating another meal from poor sad soul too absent-minded, mad, or frightened to fight back.

"What are you doing?" Kochanski cried in disbelief. "We haven't found them in two measley hours and you're planning to leave them stranded here?"

The two men exchanged satisfied glances before Hutchins rolled his eyes and turned to Kochanski. "Look sweetheart, if you'd have studied your manual like you should have done, you'd know everything about CANARIES search protocol, wouldn't you?"

Kochanski's mind and mouth spluttered, "But...but...what protocol?"

The two men laughed heartily. The manual had won the day again. Oh, the awkward CANARY demises that it had explained away. And it was fantastically thin on the old paperwork - a line through their names in the CANARY rosta in thick red pen usually sufficed. But it did mean they got through so many red pens that they could have bought shares in WHSmiths.

"Section 57, clause 18, line four."

All three of them glanced quickly at one another before realising that the last to speak was new to the conversation. Turning, they saw Kryten standing sheepishly behind them, his hands twitching in front of his chestplate, the way they always did when he was nervously challenging humans.

Murphy grinned at Kochanski, revealing a horrific set of yellow, jagged teeth. "You see, love? You should listen to your BogBot friend there," he chuckled.

Kryten clucked uncertainly, "Actually sirs, line four states that we are only permitted to return to Red Dwarf should there be conclusive proof that the missing CANARIES are in fact most likely deceased. I've spoken to the other teams on the mission today, and none have encountered any hostile life-forms. And five hours in these conditions with the water rations that we were supplied with, carries only a 0.3% liklihood of death by dehydration. Therefore, I can most likely conclude that Mister Lister and Mister Rimmer are indeed still alive."

The neanderthal pair growled audibly. Hutchins leaned into Kryten's rubber features with a menacing snarl. "Well if they don't prove it in the next 30 seconds, then I'm taking this bunch of sorry, good-for-nothings, and getting back to the Dwarf for my lunch, clear?"

A distant, yet persistent high-pitched squeal interrupted them. Across the distant horizon, a thin light pierced it's way upwards before exploding into small red flare.

Kochanski spun to Kryten, thrusting out her arm towards the direction of the flare. "Kryten,"she cried urgently, "calculate distance!"

"I'm on it, ma'am," Kryten replied as his pupils flitted left and right quickly, putting Pythagoras' Theorum to the case. He blinked. "Distance calculated at 6.8 miles, east."

A spluttered laugh of joy spilled from her lips as Kochanski turned back to the shocked expression slapped on the pair's faces, and the four of them exchanged silent glances. Eventually, Hutchins turned towards the gaggle of CANARIES sitting by the transport ship.

"What are you lot sitting there for, you useless bunch of maggots?" he hollered. "We've got some CANARIES to find!"

***********

The pair had been trekking through the dizzying maze of rock caverns for a period that refused to be defined. Time elongated, shortened, distorted and warped beyond comprehension, lost to the surroundings that refused to reveal progression or location. 

At first, their choice of path had been conducted by a careful and precise analysis that took compass direction, rock type and stability into consideration. After the time it would have taken for Lister to replay his favourite Zero-Gee football game from the '84 Winter Season in his mind (about an hour and a half), the pair instead took it in turns to use 'male intuition', that great method also understood in the business as 'guessing'. 

After the time it would have taken Rimmer to recount his passionate fumble with Yvonne McGruder three times over (about twenty minutes), the pair had been reduced to the age-old method of 'Ippy Dippy', hope disintegrating into desperation, tempers rising and flaring into frustration.

Yet another corridor of rock, which had promised some form of hope denied by others, cruelly split itself in two and opened into another fork. The hundredth? The thousandth? A jet of air escaped Rimmer's lips as a frustrated sob instead of the flippant sigh that he had hoped for.

"Lister, please. No more - " His hand, smeared with dried blood and dirt, pushed out weakly in an attempt to keep himself upright against the wall of sandstone. His legs cried mutiny and refused to hold his weight any longer, leaving him to collapse against its cool, gritty surface. As his body sank, his panic rose.

Lister on the other hand seemed to let the panic channel through him, pumping through his veins and using it as a near destructive form of adrenaline. It promised him an explosion of pure, undiluted energy, capable of either ultimate strength or emotional destruction. His pace quickened rather than slowed, convincing, no, telling himself that the path to the right was right, because 'right' meant 'right', right? 

Rimmer watched him stagger down the sloping, gritty path to the right before exhaling heavily, letting his head fall back against the rock wall and waited expectantly.

The frozen grin of manic hope slowly melted away as Lister slipped and slid down the path only to be faced with a tiny rock cave no bigger than a small box room. He stumbled forward and extended a trembling hand forwards, hoping that the far rock wall was merely an illusion. Hand met rock as they touched, cementing his vision as truth and he pulled his hand away quickly, as if the rock had seared the flesh of his palm. 

Clutching his treacherous hand with the other, he crept backwards as his breath quickened and became shallower, catching, jagged in his throat. He felt the familiar overwhelming foggy blanket sink down his throat and into his lungs as the walls shrank, slowly squeezing the sanity from his head. The adrenaline exploded into pure, undiluted panic, consuming then destroying him.

Intrigued by the strange wheezing noise that now replaced the silence of the rock passage, Rimmer's brow furrowed involuntarily.

"Lister?" he called out, uncertainly. 

Hearing only the return of his weak voice dying into a plaintive echo, Rimmer hauled his weight onto his aching feet and stumbled towards the entrance to the passage. Glancing down the small slope, he spotted Lister, half-crouched in the dust, wheezing in a manner that seemed to make Rimmer's own chest tighten. 

Hearing Rimmer's boots crunching towards him down the slope, Lister thrust out his hand, desperately seeking out something to hold on to. Making contact with the arm of Rimmer's jumpsuit, his trembling fingers grabbed the material and hauled Rimmer down so that his nose was millimetres from his own.

"Help me," he gasped.

Shocked, Rimmer could only blink in response.

********

"You mean completely starkers? Right in the middle of _The Importance of Being Earnest_?" Rimmer asked incredulously, his brow knotted in a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

Clasping a brown paper bag to his nose and mouth, which in the twenty minutes that had elapsed had slowed his breathing back to a reasonable pace, Lister's dark eyes scowled in response.

Rimmer sat back on his haunches and tapped his index finger against his lips in thought. "So which scene was it?" he asked eventually.

Lister pulled the paper bag away from his mouth reluctantly. "What?" he breathed.

"Which scene was it?" Rimmer repeated, "The scene that you so rudely interrupted with a bodily sight that would make John Merrick recoil in horror?" He ignored Lister's silent open-mouthed response, and pressed on. "I hope it wasn't that the bit where Lady Bracknell is told that Jack was found as a baby in a handbag in Worthing," Rimmer chuckled to himself. "Classic joke!"

Lister shook his head in disbelief, also attempting to displace the mental image of giving the man sat opposite a fist-related teeth disorder. He'd got a more sensitive response when he was stuck in Starbug's ducts with the Cat. "I can't believe you Rimmer, don't you have any smeggin' respect?"

Rimmer's face fell quickly. "Sorry?"

It may have been a drunken night, but Lister would have to carve out many more years in his life before he forgot the evening where he'd revealed to the others the truth behind his discovery as a tiny, helpless orphan under the pool table. "Don't you smeggin' remember Kryten's Leaving Party? I thought even you would know when to shut the smeg up, you insensitive..."

As he watched Rimmer blink rapidly in genuine surprise, it suddenly hit him. This man before him bore every physical resemblance to the hologram he'd spent years stuck with, shared various terrible experiences with, and yet, slowly, grew to tolerate through a mutual toleration and understanding of one another. But it wasn't him. 

He'd been genuinely, albeit momentarily, glad to see Rimmer again once he'd returned to Red Dwarf a few months previously. His long-lost familiar face had temporarily calmed his nerves after being placed under house arrest in his old quarters, flooding his mind with half-forgotton memories that had caused a smile to surface on his weary face. 

But he'd soon realised that this version of Rimmer was merely a ghost of the original. A presence that brought comfort through visual familiarity but nothing more. Lister sighed heavily, expelling his frustrations. "Sorry man, just forget it."

Rimmer opened his mouth to reply but Lister replaced the bag over his mouth, silently ending the conversation. Curling his tongue back, he swallowed and drew back to his haunches, turning his head to stare at the pool of light that was cast onto the jagged stone wall by the torch lying between them. 

Rimmer had long acknowledged the unspoken agreement between them that he was distinct and secondary from this supposed 'original' version of himself, but it wasn't a fact that he could let go easily. He despised the way that the others would huddle around and animatedly discuss and draw upon their shared past experiences, over him, past him, through him, as if he wasn't even there.

With his hands clasped together, he'd begun absent-mindedly picking at his palms with his thumbnail. They'd become really sore and itchy over the last couple of hours.

"Show me."

Rimmer's eyes flitted up to meet Lister's. The paper bag had been released from his mouth and was now flattened beneath the splayed fingers of his hand leaning on the cave's dusty floor. Lister nodded towards Rimmer's hands. "Show me," he repeated patiently.

Caught off guard, Rimmer proffered his hands without thinking. It was only after catching Lister whistling through his teeth that he pulled his eyes from Lister's and stared down at his own hands. Deep ugly cuts and grazes were highlighted and preserved by a thick layer of dirt, dust and grime. 

In time-honoured tradition, the pain only really hit Rimmer when he witnessed the damage that falling down the rockface had done to his palms and fingers. He immediately pulled his hands back into his lap, embarassed. "It's fine,"he mumbled.

Lister pulled his backpack in front of him and ruffled through the unseen contents. "Don't be silly, man," he retorted distractedly. In the confines of the bag, unseen to Rimmer, he located his silver hip flask and spun off the top. "Give me your hand."

Rimmer instinctively grabbed the wrist of his right hand with his left. "Why?" he replied quickly.

Lister used the only ammo he knew how in dealing with such situations with Rimmer. "Don't be a smeggin' wuss, you smeghead. I just wanna have a smeggin' look."

Riled, but still cautious, Rimmer proffered his right hand once more. Grasping the moment quickly, Lister's left hand shot out, rattlesnake fast and roughly grabbed Rimmer's wrist. With his right, he pulled out the hipflask and poured some of the contents onto his open palm.

"OWWWWSSSSSSMMMMMEEEEGGGGIN.....!"

Rimmer immediately winced and tried to wrench his hand away, but Lister gave it a couple more seconds before he was satisfied the job was done and released his wrist. Rimmer's hand shot back to the safety of it's partner as he scowled at Lister. 

"What the smeggin' hell are you...?" he began to snap venemously, before he noticed that the initial searing pain had faded to a warm fuzz. He glanced back to Lister, who was sporting his trademark hamster-grin, as he took a generous swig from the hipflask. Wheezing in a mixture of pleasure and pain, Rimmer caught a strong whiff of Lister's breath.

Rimmer's eyes dropped to his hand, which did look a hell of a lot better, before returning to Lister's. "What is it?" he asked cautiously.

Lister coughed involuntarily. "I smuggled along some of Baxter's illegal hooch," he winked. "Not such a bad idea now, was it?"

Rimmer's stomach automatically lurched at the memory of that awful booze. He'd got so rat-arsed after one large swig that he'd been unable to stand unaided, and had apparantly ended the conversation with Ackerman suspiciously prematurely when he'd passed out cold. "Are you mad?!" he spat after he'd convinced himself he could open his mouth to speak without vomiting in some form of bizarre flashback.

Lister shook his head. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. I've watered it down, I'm not suicidal."

Rimmer sighed and pulled the basic medipack from the bag. Finding a length of gauze, he ran it around his palm a few times and tucked the loose end under the loop around his wrist. The hipflask was suddenly thrust under his nose and he reeled as the smell karate-chopped the back of his throat. Rimmer looked up at Lister, who had thrown himself forward towards him and was bathed in an eerie upward glow of the torch.

"Fancy a drink?" Lister asked, his pupils already slightly dilated.

And after what can only be described as a smegging horrific day, Rimmer found he rather did.


	6. Drunk

He had to admit, the third swig had gone down far easier than the first two, Rimmer thought to himself as he slowly handed back the hipflask to the imperceptibly swaying form that Lister had become. 

The first slug had an overwhelmingly pungent smell suspiciously similar to a cocktail of cleaning products that karate-chopped the back of his throat, causing him to cough and wheeze all in one frazzled breath. Egged on by Lister with a mixture of encouragement and personal insults, the second swig had echoed the same foul taste, but with a reassuring hot kick. 

As the glowing warm sensation resonated from his belly and soothed his mind, he needed no verbal encouragement from Lister beyond a gesture with the hipflask to accept a third. _My, my,_ he giggled inwardly, as he watched Lister take a fourth slug and sigh a long contented sigh. _That last swig had gone down easier than a $£20 Titan hooker._

A sudden spark of light indicated that Lister had flicked open his lucky silver Zippo and was attempting to light up. His face resonated a drunken expression of concentration that somehow intimated he was simultaneously trying to determine the 42nd digit of Pi. After a third attempt, Lister was successful in his epic task and took a reassuring drag on the cigarette, paused for dramatic effect, and exhaled a smoky sigh. 

He glanced over at Rimmer, who seemed to be revelling in some private joke according to the slight grin on his face, and held out the cigarette to his companion.

"I seen you when youse doin' your revision," Lister slurred in response to the wrinkled nose that Rimmer sported. "You sssmoke when you're nervous." He waggled a conspiratal finger in front of his lips. "I won't let on, you sssmegger, don't worry."

Rimmer let out a breath he didn't realise he was holding; but rather than the non-committal sigh he'd planned, his now booze-numbed lips gave a rather strange horse impression. Inwardly somewhere, he bristled at the fact that Lister had cottoned on to his nervous habit. But for the larger part, at this precise moment in time, he really couldn't give two smegs. He accepted the offer gratefully, took a clumsy drag of his own, and passed it straight back to Lister.

"GAAAAAAH ta very much," he exhaled a combination of thanks and pent-up stress.

Lister sniggered as he returned the cigarette to his own lips. "Never could hold your booze, could ya man?" he chided as Rimmer began mopping at his face with his hand. 

He giggled for a few moments at a far-off memory before remembering to share it with Rimmer. "Do you remember -?" he began, before correcting himself with the grating of gears. "I remember Kryten's leaving party when our Rimmer drank so much that he had to crawl all the way back to the officer's quarters before we all zonked out." Lister shook his head, trying to catch his breath. "He - he couldn't stop singing #We'll Meet Again# - " the rest of Lister's story was lost to giggles.

Rimmer, however, failed to see the funny side. With an expressionless face, he leant back and supported his weight on his bandaged hands, allowing his head to roll back to face the ceiling. If he heard any more stories about how chummy Lister and his other self had been before he'd come along and spoiled all the fun, he was going to puke. He screwed up his eyes and released them again, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach. Ugh, that was if the hooch didn't have the same idea first.

Trying to distract himself with something, anything, to fight off the hooch-fuelled nausea, he gazed up at the shards of light strewn across the rock ceiling. He noticed how the single beam of light from the torch arched up the wall beside them before hitting a jagged collection of stalactites and refracting into two distinctly seperate streams of light. Each path cast seemed to stretch out in a completely opposite direction to the other. 

It was a seemingly meaningless image to the average, perhaps sober, onlooker. But in Rimmer's alcoholic state, it conjured up a question that, after these last six long months, he simply couldn't keep to himself any longer.

"What happened to him?" he asked, his words slipping out before he'd had a chance to check them. Somewhere deep inside, a voice screamed at him to stop, to spare Lister's feelings about his predecessor. But now, fuelled by the alcohol and the nicotine, he no longer cared about social etiquette or the stupid smegging unspoken vow not to mention him.

Even in the addled state that his brain was in, Lister knew exactly what Rimmer was referring to, and dodged it with little grace.

"I told you when I first saw you, man," he mumbled quickly in reply. "The radiation leak wiped all of you out, you know that." He took a long drag from the cigarette, in a visual attempt to indicate story over.

Rimmer, however, was not to be put off. He shook his head, which seemed to feel ten times heavier than he remembered it being before. "No, no, no. You know I mean after the accident," he pleaded mournfully. 

He caught Lister's eye unsteadily, who returned his gaze with a distant but distinct sadness. "You keep letting slip about all your grand, wonderful adventures," he continued bitterly. "So come on, if it's all so damn special," he goaded, lifting his right arm to beckon forth to Lister before quickly putting it back to keep his balance. "I wanna hear the finale."

An awkward silence hovered in the cigarette smoke that swirled between them. When no reply came, Rimmer drew a hand across his nose. "Screw you," he slurred flatly, as his arms gave up supporting his weight and he sank back to lie down, gazing at the ceiling in a sightless stare. He simply lay there, feeling the invisible waves that seemed to emanate from every pore, pulling and pushing at his body as his world silently span.

"Worst day of me life."

The mumbled words cut through the silence. Rimmer's ears leapt to attention, but his body remained still. He wasn't too sure if he was capable of moving at that point.

"You were pissed off at us all," Lister began quietly. "A version of you from another dimension had showed up again. You hated him 'cos," Lister rubbed his eyes, trying to remember the exact words, "he supposedly had all the breaks that you didn't get in life, you know?" he waved his hand loosely in dismissal, as if that was of little importance. 

"You were off by yourself, sulkin' around the cargo decks, when a knight escaped from the AR machine cos I didnt shut the game down properly." Lister seemed to pause, whether this was due to the difficulty of the recollection or for dramatic effect, Rimmer couldn't quite put his finger on it. "It was 'im," he added, mournfully. "He killed ya, and it was my fault."

With great effort, Rimmer hauled himself to sit upright to face his companion, but Lister looked away. After a moment, Lister took a deep breath, which he released in a heavy sigh, locking onto Rimmer's blank stare once more. "I'm sorry, man," he offered. "I feel awful about it."

Lister watched as Rimmer's eyes flitted left to right, almost imperceptibly, looking first into one eye and then the other. Rimmer's brow finally furrowed, a mixture of confusion and betrayal.

"Bullshit," he replied quietly.

Lister clasped his face in his hands, exasperated. "Rimmer, please, I'm sorry okay? I really am, I just - "

"That's not what I meant," Rimmer retorted, silencing Lister's verbal diarrhoea. "What you're telling me. It's bullshit, isn't it?"

Lister's hands dropped slowly from his face as he stared in pure, undilated shock at Rimmer. He tried to catch his breath. "W-what did you say?"

"You're lying," Rimmer replied simply. There was no longer any malice or desperation in his voice, merely a need to know the truth.

Lister was stunned. Cat, Kryten, Kochanski, Holly - they'd all taken his word as if it were gospel. Yet it only took one of his most despised companions to give him one drunken glance, and he could see straight through the facade that he'd kept hidden for over a year now. 

He felt himself on the precarious edge, the precipace of truth. If there was one time to confess his sins, it was now. Trapped in an underground maze, most likely to die from dehydration, starvation, madness, perhaps all of the above.

Lister took a hard swig from the hipflask and shook his head, sorrowfully. "The others, they don't - "

"It's okay," Rimmer reassured quickly, "I won't tell 'em, I promise."

Lister's eyes met Rimmer's. His eyes were pretty dilated, and his breath was so pungent that he had to blink at the fumes. Rimmer was most definitely drunk. But even still, Lister knew that he meant every word. He proffered the now half-empty hipflask to Rimmer.

"Trus' me," Lister slurred. "You're gonnaneed it."

Rimmer needed no further encouragement. He took as large a glug as he could stomach to brace himself for the worst as Lister lit up a second cigarette.

Then Lister told him everything. About the legend of Ace Rimmer and how the latest of the line had confided in him about everything. How his predecessor had trained Rimmer to be his replacement before he'd sucumbed to his deathbed. And finally how he'd helped Rimmer to overcome cold feet, resulting in his eventual, secret departure as the new Ace.

On the last few drags of the cigarette now, Rimmer exhaled a plume of smoke into the air above him, watching it swirl into a galaxy of his own devising. "So, he's still out there somewhere?" he mused, holding the cigarette out to Lister with an arm that swooped somewhat unsteadily from side to side.

Calculating as best he could, Lister managed to retreive it on the fourth attempt, despite his own swaying hand, and he returned the cigarette to his lips. He watched as Rimmer returned his arm to cradle his head, as he lay back, one leg crossed on the gritty floor, just as he used to in the bottom bunk.

"I guess so," Lister half-slurred, half mumbled, the cigarette still hanging loosely from his mouth. He honestly didn't know where he was. He felt a stab of sadness. He didn't even know if he was safe. Accomplished. Maybe, finally, even happy.

Rimmer offered nothing in reply, but merely sighed contentedly. He pulled out his right arm from under his head and lay it across his eyes, blocking out the light of the torch. Eventually he spoke, with a conviction and gratitude that he'd never heard even his Rimmer use.

"Thank you."

And with those two words, the guilt that Lister seemed to have harboured for fourteen long and lonely months, disapated. He smiled to himself, sinking back against the craggy wall and took a final drag of his cigarette before stubbing it out on the floor.

Long-lost memories, half-buried under the sands of time, seemed to be teased out from the recesses of his mind by the scarily potent booze. Randomly, Lister remembered skipping 20th Century History one bitterly cold November afterrnoon to go drinking under the canal bridge back in Liverpool. 

He must have been twelve, perhaps thirteen, when he would hang out with society's teenage dregs; the youths that Liverpool's education and care system had long since forgotten. Passing around the large plastic bottle of cheap cider one way and the single precious cigarette the other, it was one of those treasured times where he'd still felt a degree of normality and belonging. 

His nan would have killed him if she'd found out. She was always banging on about the importance of his education, rest her soul. But young Dave always found that his mind wandered when he was at school, not for lack of trying to concentrate, but it all seemed such a useless waste of his time. After all, if he was going to be a mechanic like his stepdad had always hoped when he was still alive, he would have to wait until he was sixteen, and then go back to the garage on Sturberry Road to try and persuade them to give him an apprenticeship. 

Lister absently took a final sad swig of his hipflask and gave a shuddered sigh. Shame that plan never worked out. He turned his heavy, treasonous head to Rimmer, who was still on his back with his arm lying across his eyes.

"When -- " he stopped suddenly to stop himself from retching and swallowed defiantly before continuing. "Whennnyou was a kid," he slurred to Rimmer quietly, "what did you wanna be?"

Rimmer was silent. Lister, thinking that he'd missed the question, was about to either repeat himself or prompt Rimmer with a kick to the leg when he finally replied. With his last exhale before sinking into a deep and satisfying drunken sleep, he mumbled a single word.

"Happy."

Lister didn't reply, but simply nodded. His head slumped back against the rock as he listened to Rimmer's gentle snoring. Happy? He mused. He could go with happy. Lister closed his eyes and blissfully drifted to sleep.

For the first time in three million years, his dreams of the cold, rough streets of Liverpool were vivid enough to bring a smile to his face as he slept.


	7. Water

Her soft lips gently kissed every inch of his cheeks, eyes and nose as she ran her long thin fingers reassuringly through the tight curls of his hair. Pulling away, she smiled her famous pinball smile as he lost himself in her milky blue eyes. Drinking in the moment, he sighed contentedly as she slowly pulled him forward to kiss his forehead, and he held her close, breathing in the smell of her hair.

Lister jerked awake with a snort, releasing his thumb from his mouth. Bleary-eyed, he took stock of his surroundings and immediately wished he hadn't. It was as he'd secretly feared; he was indeed still in the third pit of hell with a cracking hangover. But despite the horror of it all, it wasn't these elements that disappointed him most. It was that _she _was no longer there beside him. He sighed once more, but this time his heart was heavy.

He'd never wanted to wake up.

As each of his senses awakened, they each proffered their own reluctant take on the situation, adding layer upon head-throbbingly horrible layer to his hangover. The air smelt musty and stale, the only sound was Rimmer's persistent, nasal snoring, and his tongue tasted - Lister gagged. Ugh, if he hadn't have already known that they'd downed two-thirds of Baxter's hooch in some desperate attempt to reach oblivion or parts beyond, he'd have sworn blind he'd spent half the night licking the bar top and carpet of a Liverpudlian pub after a particularly heavy Saturday night.

With a great deal of difficulty, he hauled himself upright and rubbed his eyes with the flats of his palms. He turned, noticing that at some point in the night he must have changed positions, drawn up the backpack, which now had a head-shaped dent in the middle, and used it as a makeshift pillow. Probably the reason why his right earlobe was currently throbbing red raw, he thought, as he made a half-hearted attempt to pull it back into shape. 

He blinked rapidly, encouraging his eyes to acclimatise themselves to the light of the torch that neither of them quite had the confidence to turn off during the night, and glanced over at Rimmer. He was still asleep, but on his side now, knees drawn up and arms folded tightly across his chest. If it wasn't for his awfully-nasal snoring, Lister would have definitely been checking his vitals after how much he'd put away last night.

Hauling over the backpack, Lister rummaged through the contents as quietly as he could as not to wake Rimmer. He wanted to delay the inevitable of his awakening, as not to add his whining voice to the wonderous collection of pains and squeals that already ran riot around his temples, danced across his forehead and sank, resonating into his brain. He located the bottle of water and took a long, satisfying swig. It may have been warm and half-stale, but at that moment in time it was as refreshing as a cold beer on a hot summer's afternoon.

A splutter of chesty coughs racked Rimmer's body, and Lister stopped suddenly like a cat caught in headlights. Rimmer didn't quite stir, instead turning over onto his front with a low, rumbling groan and sank back to sleep once more. Lister released his breath in a grateful sigh, placing the bottle on the ground carefully.

He returned to the bag, rustling through the contents and pulled out the broken remains of the radio transmitter that he'd scooped up when Rimmer had been scaling the rock wall where they'd first fallen. Grabbing the torch and holding it between his teeth, he examined what was left of the transmitter, hoping against hope for something salvageable. 

Untangling the knotted wires from behind the speaker with his dirty fingernails, he noticed where a few loose wire ends had frayed, freeing themselves from their original positions, and that a few small screws had either come loose, or were now missing altogether. A string of hissed, mumbled obscenities tumbled from his open mouth.

More coughs hacked across from Rimmer's direction, and this time he did stir. Hauling up his heavy head, his half-open eyes surveyed his surroundings before finally coming to a rest on Lister. His head sank back down to the warmth of his crossed arms with a groan.

"Oh right," he mumbled into his sleeves. He sounded just as disappointed as Lister had that this indeed was reality.

Lister merely cocked an eyebrow in response. Unclipping the tiny black knife out from its holder on the side of his left boot, he slid it out, and with torch still firmly fixed between his teeth, began to use it as a makeshift screwdriver.

Rimmer lifted his head once more. "Have we got anything left to drink?" he croaked, throat like sandpaper. "Apart from that godawful hooch?" he quickly added.

Without breaking his concentrating frown with the radio transmitter, Lister spoke with lost consonants, torch between his teeth. "Sure," he replied absently. "A selection of teas, coffees, and freshly squeezed orange juice, whatever takes your fancy."

"Hilarious, Lister," came the short reply.

Rimmer's stomach lurched involuntarily. They hadn't eaten in over 24 hours. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and tried not to fantasise about bacon sandwiches. 

A sudden clattered thump beside his right ear caused Rimmer to jump as the loud noise hurtled down his ear canal and rattled his throbbing brain. Groaning, he noticed that it was water bottle that Lister had chucked over in his vague direction.

He scowled, turning to face him. "Could you possibly _be _any louder, or is it a special gift?" he snapped.

Lister still refused to return his stare, which infuriated him greatly. Instead, his teeth simply grinned around the plastic handle of the torch. Rolling his eyes, Rimmer dragged himself to his knees and snatched up the water bottle. It was worryingly light.

"Is this all we have?" he asked, concerned. He wiggled the bottle listening to the high-pitched splashes emanating from within. "Shouldn't we be rationing this?"

Lister pulled the torch from his mouth as his eyes met with Rimmer's for the first time that morning. "You really think we have that much of a choice?" he asked flatly.

Reluctantly, Rimmer took a single swig from the bottle and smacked his lips. It was horribly warm and stale, yet his tongue cried out for more. Miserable, he replaced the lid and sat back on his haunches, holding out the bottle to Lister who shook his head silently in reply. 

Rimmer's brow furrowed, his brain only just taking in what Lister was up to. He watched as Lister attempted to fix in a tiny loose screw into the back of the transmitter with a small knife blade, and swore as the tiny screw escaped, scattering off into the darkness.

Rimmer blinked. "What are you doing?"

Lister sighed angrily, feeling around blindly for the lost screw with his fingers. "What does it look like I'm doing?" he mumbled. "I'm trying to fix the radio transmitter."

Rimmer shook his head, exasperated. "Lister," he implored, "that radio is dead. I've seen old people's homes with more life than that thing."

Lister waggled the knife towards Rimmer, grinning. "Or one of your parties, you mean?" he added sarcastically.

Rimmer's nostrils flared. He silently pulled himself to his feet, dusting himself down. "I don't know about you, Lister," he snarked, "but I think we need to keep moving whilst our legs are still willing to do so, don't you? Focus our energies on something a bit more useful?"

Lister watched as Rimmer stomped out of the cave before his eyes dropped to the mess of circuitry in his lap. Sighing, he scooped up the remains of the transmitter, dropped them into his rucksack and hauled himself to his feet, trying to ignore the protests of his busted ankle. Stooping down to grab the water bottle and the torch, he threw the rucksack onto his back and hobbled after Rimmer.

The pair stumbled on silently for hours. The tunnel of their choice as they exited the small stone cave where they'd slept had offered no further options to turn off from their current path. The tunnel warped and distorted in size, sometimes with high ceilings punctuated with stalactites, other times only small enough to crawl and wriggle through.

They'd been crawling through the same sandy tunnel for the past hour, when dehydration got the better of them and they were forced to stop to rest. Rimmer's hands quivered uncontrollably as he wiped the sweat from his brow, the saltiness stinging the cut across his temple.

"I - I don't feel too great," Rimmer announced shakily.

Lister simply shook his swimmy head. Neither did he. The lack of water was beginning to dry out his mind, fuzzing his thoughts and making him sleepy. He fished out the water bottle from the side of his backpack, took a small sip, the closest approximation to half of what remained, and handed over the remainder of the sip for Rimmer to drain. Pulling the last drops of water from the bottle, Rimmer slumped back against the wall and whimpered.

He turned his head to Lister with fear in his eyes. "W-what if we - ?"

Rimmer never got to finish the sentence. The sandy tunnel wall against which he was leaning heavily, gave way, sending him tumbling backwards and down a steep gritty slope with a strangled yell. His shoulders and arms cried out in shock and pain, ironically seeming to hit every lump and bump on the way down, his world crazily spinning as if he were trapped inside an industrial washing machine. Eventually he hit the ground with a bump, and he lay on the floor groaning, every bone in his body queuing at the complaints desk.

Lister scrabbled over to the neat hole that Rimmer had kindly created and peered down. Rimmer lay inanimate at the bottom, perhaps fifteen or twenty metres down.

"Rimmer, man, are you okay?" he hollered.

When no reply came, Lister swung his feet out of the hole and began carefully slipping and sliding on his backside down the precarious slope. He soon lost control with a muffled cry, and gaining unwanted momentum, he too began helplessly tumbling down the slope towards his companion.

Rimmer lifted his throbbing head, casting his gaze forward with heavy eyelids. He'd heard Lister's shouts, but muffled. As if he were speaking through -

Rimmer blinked quickly, convinced his eyes were playing tricks on him. A bluey-white light danced and flickered along the cave walls, reflecting the movements of a pool of -

"Water!" he croaked.

Rimmer had almost managed to haul himself eagerly upright to reach the pool, when a large, heavy weight suddenly bowled into him. Knocked clean off his feet and tangled in a mess of knotted, flailing limbs, Rimmer realised, after he'd regained his senses, that Lister's crotch was dangerously close to his face. Rimmer wriggled, trying to free himself as quickly as possible with a string of expletives that he had no idea his vocabulary had stashed away for the most horrific of scenarios such as this.

Lister climbed off of him, groaning. "Are you okay, man?"

Rimmer growled audibly. "I'm not sure which was worse. Falling down that smegging slope or getting your package shoved in my face."

Lister rolled his eyes. If Rimmer had the capacity to insult, he was fine. He rubbed his sore head, cursing under his breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Rimmer slowly stood, staring across the cavern with a manic grin creeping up one side of his face. Confused, Lister turned to follow his gaze and immediately sported a grin of his own.

"Water?!" Lister gasped in shock.

The two men needed no further exchange. Together, they scrabbled across the cavern, dropped to their knees at the water's edge, and devoid of all care or embarrassment, dunked their entire heads under the surface, sucking in as much water as they could. It tasted slightly salty, perhaps even milky, Lister mused, but it was _cold _and _wet _and _liquid _and he couldn't care less.

Eventually sated, the two pulled out their heads with a gurgled splash, panting with joy. As their minds drank in the water, self-awareness returned to them both, and they stared at each other blinking, rivulets pouring from their hair and down their faces. Rimmer cleared his throat. Lister suddenly found his fingernails most interesting.

Rimmer stood slowly and turned, allowing his eyes to scan the walls of the cave. Apart from the way they'd fallen down, there were no other places to go. He turned back to the pool of water that arced out from the stone wall before them in an uneven semi-circle.

"It's a dead end," he swallowed, the words sinking down with realisation. He grasped his temples tightly and moaned. "Oh smeg, it's a dead end."

Lister's throat tightened. "Now you can smeggin' stop that talk right now, y'goit, do you hear me?" he snapped suddenly, finger thrust towards him. He took a deep reassuring breath, before scanning the cavern himself and coming to rest on the water before them. "Maybe not," he mused.

Rimmer's eyes flitted between the water, Lister, and back to the water again. In the distinct absence of charts and pointy diagrams, he was lost. "What are you talking about, you gimboid?" he threw in for good measure.

"Well, look," Lister pointed towards the wall of the cavern where water met rock. "You see that?"

Rimmer tapped his lips with his index finger, his face screwed up in mock concentration. "Yeeeeee-no."

Lister turned to Rimmer, unimpressed. "You're not looking at the water," he replied flatly. "See?" he pointed towards the wall once more. "It's flowing by the rock face, there."

Genuinely stumped, Rimmer shook his head and shrugged. "And?" he asked impatiently. Surely amongst the main points on water's job description, apart from being wet, was to flow?

Lister sighed loudly, slowing down his speech as if he were explaining something to a four year old. "If the water's flowing, it means it must be feeding in from somewhere we can't see. Like an underwater tunnel, perhaps?"

Arms folded, Rimmer threw an evil look at Lister's back as he walked away from him and towards the edge of the water. Shrugging off his backpack, Lister turned back to Rimmer with a flourish and stepped backwards, dropping quickly into the milky depths.

Rimmer's arms dropped slowly in surprise, as open-mouthed he quickly raced over to the edge of the water. Lister resurfaced, his thick rasta plaits sodden with water snaked in front of his shoulders, and grinned at Rimmer's fearful expression.

Upon seeing the irritating gerbil grin, Rimmer's features hardened into a lofty scowl. "What are you doing?" he asked with a patronising tone, hands thrust on his hips.

Lister kicked away into a front crawl, casting as much splash as humanly possible in Rimmer's direction, before stopping by the rock wall. "Proving a point," he replied simply with a grin. Gasping in a lungful of air, he sank under the surface once more.

Rimmer's tongue clicked in irritation. Short, smug git always had to go against the book to prove a point. He paced up and down by the water's edge like a caged lion. Why couldn't they just climb back up from where they'd just fallen? 

As if trying to make a point, his mind's eye slammed back the memory of himtumbling down the rockface after he'd fired the flares when they'd first fallen. He shuddered quickly at the memory. Perhaps not. 

He glanced quickly at his watch and then back to the water, a flutter in his chest. How long had he been under there?

A sudden burst of bubbles erupted to the surface about three metres from the edge of the water, dissipating just as quickly, and Rimmer stopped abruptly in expectation of Lister's appearance. But he didn't follow. Rimmer blinked, wondering whether his senses had fooled him as he moved to the edge of the water.

"Lister?" he called out uncertainly. The only sound to return was the echo of his own voice.

Rimmer's heart quickened as he tried to swallow the dry lump in his throat. He crouched down by the rock edge, quivering at the silence that rippled across the surface of the water.

Without warning, a large form broke the slick surface of the water, roughly grabbed the lapels of his padded jacket, and hauled him head first into the murky depths. Rimmer's panicked lungs seemed to pull in the salty water and he coughed out a stream of bubbles as he scrabbled desperately to pull away from the tangle of limbs he seemed to be entwined with. Kicking out, he located the floor, pushed himself upwards, and surfaced, gasping in a mixture of ragged breaths and spluttered coughs.

Pulling his hands down his face to wipe the water out of his stinging eyes, his ears popped to the sound of helpless giggles. Turning slowly, he saw Lister, arms wrapped around himself, laughing uncontrollably. 

Rimmer's open-mouthed gasping slowed as his eyes pinched in confusion for a fleeting moment, before hardening into a murderous scowl. He launched himself towards the gerbil grin, wading as fast as the chest-high water would allow. However, Rimmer's foot soon tangled in the unseen reeds of the lake's floor, sending him flailing forward and under the water once more, causing Lister's giggles to double in ferocity.

Rimmer eventually resurfaced, coughing and spluttering; the fight now gone from his belly. Most likely replaced with most of contents of that sickly lakewater, as Rimmer shuddered, clamping his lips together to fight the queasy feeling that threatened to make a physical appearance.

Lister secured his hands on Rimmer's upper arms, holding him upright. "Too easy, man," he wheezed happily, his throat raw from laughing. "Too easy."

Rimmer windmilled his arms, releasing Lister's grasp in a splash of water. "Are you crazy?!" he spluttered. "You know I can't - " he stopped himself, quickly, avoiding Lister's questioning look by rubbing the non-existent water from his eyes.

After a pause, Lister spoke. "There's an opening the other side."

Rimmer looked up, genuinely surprised. "Really?"

Lister half-smiled humbly and shrugged. "It's an underwater tunnel. Four, maybe five metres long. Exits into a new section of cavern." He ran his hand through his tight curls. "Come on, we'd better ditch what we don't need."

Rimmer watched as Lister waded back to the edge and hauled himself out, before turning to extend a hand to help him out of the water. Feeling the sick feeling return to the pit of his stomach, Rimmer waded across and accepted the hand up, reluctantly. 

Yes, it was good news that they were no longer at a dead end and there was a way out, but Rimmer wasn't sure if he would have actually been happier going back the long way round. He was still reeling from the unwelcome childhood memories that had slammed back into his mind in the moment of panic when he'd felt trapped under the water.

Lister pulled out everything he deemed non-essential from the backpack, retaining only the essentials for the protection of the water-proof bag - the broken remains of the radio transmitter, the torch, his lucky zippo, the fags, and the booze. Rimmer rolled his eyes at the latter items, but his heart wasn't in it.

As the pair slid back into the water and waded slowly to the tunnel's entrance, Lister sensed Rimmer's discomfort. "Don't worry, man, it was like eight seconds, ten seconds tops," he assured. "You go first. Should be easy peasy for someone with a Bronze Swimming Certificate," he added, doing his best not to smirk.

Rimmer did his best to slow his breathing as he gazed down at the rippling water, but his nerves had got the better of him. He span back to Lister, catching his eye.

"I didn't get the brick," he confessed suddenly.

Lister blinked. "Sorry?"

Rimmer screwed up his eyes before releasing them once more. "I cheated," he sighed. Met with Lister's confused stare, Rimmer quickly continued. "The swimming teacher's back was turned for a second when the other kids were mucking about. I just grabbed one from the side of the pool and pretended that I'd done it." The words tumbled out as if the justification would rescue him from the torture to come.

Lister nodded, understanding. "It's okay, man." Although it felt a horribly strange gesture, he patted Rimmer on the shoulder. "I'll be right behind you if you get stuck. Trust me."

Rimmer felt slightly more reassured, and decided to give Lister the benefit of the doubt. Turning back to the rippling water, he exhaled as slowly and fully as he could. Gasping in a lungful of air, he pinched his nose and plunged down into the freezing cold depths that slammed with a shock into his temples. 

Indeed, despite the cloudy blur to the water, he could see an opening about a metre down in the rock face, perhaps a metre and a half in width. He pushed himself, hands first into the tunnel, and kicked as hard as the weight of his boots would allow.

Lister, meanwhile, kept back for a few seconds to allow Rimmer room to move through and avoid the risk of receiving a kick to the head. He marvelled at the light reflection of the water ripples cast onto the rock above him, before shaking his head. Typical Rimmer, he thought, cheating at a swimming lesson. Anything to get the piece of paper that immortalised any form of success. Tightening the straps on his backpack, Lister drew in a lungful of air, tipped his head forward into the water, and swam back down into the tunnel.

The tunnel was slightly too small to use his hands to aid his stroke, so Rimmer reached forward and grabbed hold of the protruding rocks from the side walls or the plants along the floor, using them to pull himself through as quickly as possible. 

Despite trying to release his breath in a slow, steady stream, memories that he'd tried to push down into the dark recesses of his mind suddenly seemed to surface and explode across his consciousness, and he coughed suddenly in a panic of bubbles.

He was nine years old, back at school on Io. Martin Riley, one of young Arnold's most-feared school bullies, had cornered him in the 4th Year boys toilets to steal his pocket money. Upon discovering that young Arnold had as many assets as a 21st Century Icelandic bank, Martin had grabbed him by the back of his school jumper, rucking up the material around his throat tight enough to make him choke. He'd then shoved him into the only cubicle, thrust him face first into the toilet bowl and flushed. 

Thrashing his hands out desperately, hitting the flimsy walls of the cubicle, the cold sides of the cistern, he'd tried everything to make him to stop. He remembered the burning taste of the bleach hitting the back of his throat, the panic that sank down his throat with the foul, stinking water, and the desperate flurry off bubbles that burst against his tightly closed eyes as he screamed silently for help.

Reality slammed back into focus as Rimmer's lungs screamed at him for air. Grabbing onto another handhold, he managed to haul himself along the final stretch until the tunnel's floor dropped away as Rimmer finally reached the opening. Arching his back, his exhausted arms gave one final stroke and he broke the surface with a half-gasp, half-cry. 

He coughed and spluttered as he treaded water, realising that this side was far too deep to stand up, and waited to one side for Lister to exit the tunnel. He grinned to himself, secretly amazed that he'd actually managed it. Ha, he thought, if only Mrs Solomon his old swimming instructor could see him now. Then they'd see who the useless little weed was!

Rimmer's breathing had slowed to almost a normal pace, yet Lister still hadn't emerged. He growled audibly. It was one thing to scare the shit out of him by hauling him into the water, but to try and trick him a second time was beyond his fast-dissipating patience. He sighed, pinching his nose once more and sank back down into the freezing depths to shoot him a visual display of his annoyance.

Unfortunately, what met his blurry vision was quite beyond what he was expecting.


	8. Breathe

The first thing he saw were Lister's hands, extended towards him in a long-forgotten gesture to pull himself free of the tunnel. With his head bowed, eyes closed and mouth half-open, he barely looked conscious. In the eerily milky haze of the water, he looked horribly ghost-like.

Rimmer did what came naturally to him. He panicked. 

His body jerked back in an explosion of bubbles; a combination of his silent yell and flailing limbs that had seemingly forgotten how to co-ordinate themselves into an effective stroke. Eventually, he managed to surface, half-gasping, half-hyperventilating as the shock shook him to his core. 

What had happened down there? Was he dead? Unconscious?

Quickly, the reality of the situation managed to grasp him by the crown jewels and he hurriedly dived back down to Lister's inanimate frame once more. Grabbing Lister's left arm, he tugged desperately to bring him up to the surface, but something held him fast. Confused and panicked, Rimmer leant his weight backwards to allow his boots to meet the wall beside the tunnel's entrance, took the strain against Lister's arm, and pulled as hard as he could.

The acute pain in his left shoulder yanked Lister back to the edge of consciousness, and his blurry vision met with Rimmer's pale and terrified expression. The man seemed to hover in mid-air before him, before turning to float away and out of sight. 

He was vaguely aware of a distant yet persistent feeling of panic, but the warm fuzzy cotton wool that his mind had become deemed it of little importance right now. The hot, white ball in his lungs burned for release, threatening to overwhelm him. With something wonderful or something terrible, Lister was unsure. His eyes sank closed once more.

Rimmer broke the surface of the water with a gasp before sobbing desperately. His head whipped round in all directions as he treaded water, frantically seeking out someone or something to help that he may simply have missed before. Finding nothing, he was left to face his orchestra of crazed, rambling thoughts and tried to conduct them into some form of coherent plan. 

He needed time to think, time that neither he nor certainly Lister had. He needed to buy the man some time, and only one thing could afford him the precious seconds he needed. 

Despite the severity of the situation, Rimmer still had time to turn his head to the unseen heavens.

"I really hate you," he spluttered.

Rimmer drew in as much air as his burning lungs would allow and dropped under the surface once more. His chest felt close to bursting from the pressure as he swam back down to his companion, and he fought the instinct to exhale. 

Finally meeting him face to face once more, he grabbed hold of Lister by the cheeks with both hands and shot him a look of daggers. He'd better be smegging infinitely grateful for this.

Wrenched from the hallucinations of his childhood days with his stepdad on Southport beach, he felt Rimmer grab his face with both hands, sporting a strangely familiar expression. His furry mind giggled inwardly, thinking he must be trying to kiss him. He wasn't wrong. 

Their lips suddenly crushed together, teeth clashing against one another as he felt a huge rush of air hurled into his lungs. It was hot and thin on oxygen, but it seemed to cool and slicken his mind, allowing the cogs to start turning once more. _Stuck_, he remembered with a sudden rush to the head. He was stuck.

His right arm reached back to his legs, and he felt the thick weeds tangled around his right boot. He could see that Rimmer had also spotted the problem but looked decidedly pale, and he watched with a strange mixture of panic and fury as Rimmer pushed himself away and up out of his line of sight.

Even before Rimmer hit the surface once more, his mind was racing. He had to find something sharp enough to cut through the weeds and release Lister's foot. His exhausted mind tossed him the only pathetic suggestions it could determine from the bleak situation. Even conversing with his own mind, Rimmer couldn't hold back the snidiness.

_Scissors?_

Great idea, genius, I'll just pop down to B&amp;Q and buy a pair shall I? Try again.

_A rock?_

Not a bad shout, I'll admit. But I can't see any flint-like rocks a decent enough size to work. Try again.

_How about the knife?_

Psch. Yeah right, which knife?

_The knife from your boot, you smeghead. Ha! Now who's the genius?_

His subconscious, clearly in on the idea, tossed him an image from that morning in a flash of light. He could even see that gerbil-faced grin on Lister's face as he waggled the knife he'd used as a makeshift screwdriver in front of his eyes. Surely if Lister had been issued with one, then...?

Rimmer sank under the water slightly as his left arm ceased paddling, his hand scrabbling over the surface of his boot. Snapping open the catch, he slid out the small black knife from its sheath and hauled it above the water in inspection, just to double check in case some cruel twist of fate the JMC had decided to furnish him with a mini-ruler or something equally frustratingly useless. But no, it was indeed a tiny, but oh so precious knife. A small amused cough spluttered from his lips. Genius indeed.

Gulping in another lungful of air as he clutched the knife in his hand, Rimmer sank back down into the dark depths. He could see that Lister had been struggling with the weeds around his ankle and had even managed to release a few knots. However, three thick tight loops still encircled his boot, and he was fast running out of air. 

Rimmer squirmed. It had been far simpler to give Lister the kiss of life when he wasn't fully conscious. But now, as he stared at him in the face with desperately wide dark brown eyes, Rimmer felt a wrench of embarrassment. 

Grasping Lister's face once more, he closed his eyes as their lips met and he hurled as much air he could into Lister's lungs, imploring his brain to conjure up a far nicer scenario that somehow involved Yvonne McGruder wearing nothing but a thong and a peep-hole bra. Hell, it could have been a male Alsatian with saliva that tasted of dog food and testicles for all he cared. Anything better than locking lips with David smegging Lister.

Breaking away, he thrust the knife into Lister's grateful hands and watched him saw desperately at the final weeds ensnarled around his boot. Three left...two left...

By the time Rimmer realised what was happening, it was far too late to rectify. A dark, fuzzy cloud began to creep inwards from the edges of his already blurry vision as the lack of oxygen and inevitable exhaustion overwhelmed him. His eyes fluttered closed to the now naked Yvonne as she beckoned to him from his warm, comfy bunk. A hot glowing sensation spread through him as his lungs sighed. He could spare another twelve minutes...

Suddenly, he felt arms clasping him around the chest wrenching him away from Yvonne and he snapped open his eyes in shock. Lister had managed to free himself from the tunnel, spotted he was in trouble and grabbed hold of him in a tight grip. Locked together, they became a tangle of limbs as they kicked, pulled and dragged themselves to the surface.

Gasping, they wrenched in as much air as their now ragged lungs would allow as they paddled, exhausted and desperate, back to dry land. As they hauled themselves out of the water, their uniforms heavy and dripping, Lister coughed up an arc of water, his shoulders heaving with the effort. Exhaustion overwhelming them, the pair sank to the floor and sprawled themselves on the hard stone ground.

They lay there for several minutes, panting visibly like spent fish. At first the ripple lights on the ceiling above them danced wildly, echoing the water's recollection of events. As the water eventually calmed, the dancing slowed to a faint wave, shifting left and right, almost imperceptibly. The air was now almost silent, save for the faint ripple and trickle of the water.

"Rimmer - "

"Don't. Just, don't."

Despite his shaking arms, Lister managed to pull himself up to his knees, and cast his gaze over to Rimmer who still lay on his back, limbs sprawled outwards. His tone had been less humble, more irritable.

He frowned, confused. "But - "

Rimmer silenced him once more with an audible growl. "Are you deaf as well as suicidal you idiotic gimboid?" he spat. "I meant drop it." He pulled himself to his feet, unsteadily but with undeniable determination, still refusing to look Lister in the eye. He laughed bitterly, but there was no mirth, as the water from his curls of hair slowly trickled down his face.

Coughs racked Lister's body. "Why are you being like this?" he wheezed painfully.

"_Trust me_, you said." Rimmer elaborated, as if loathed to have to explain himself. He shook his head before rounding on Lister, all confidence shattered. "_Trust _you?!" he cried almost hysterical, as he wrapped his arms across himself, visibly shaking. His features hardened into a defensive snarl. "Fuck you."

Lister recoiled. That had stung.

"Rimmer, man, I don't get it," he pleaded weakly. He turned his head down towards the rippling depths, and a sudden wave of nausea hit him. "I could have died down there, but you - "

Rimmer threw his head back in exasperation. "What the hell do you mean, 'you _could _have died down there'?" he interrupted quickly, his voice devoid of all sympathy. He pulled his head upright, staring Lister straight in the eye. "We _are_ going to die down here." His voice cracked, his words interwoven with fear and hatred. He threw his arms up, wildly. "I mean, in case you hadn't yet noticed, we've left one set of caves, and landed in - oh yes, I do believe it is - _another _set of caves," he cried, punctuating every word with all the malice he could muster. "Out of the frying pan, and into the same smegging, bloody identical frying pan!"

Their charged stares remained interlocked for what seemed like an eternity before Rimmer swallowed heavily and tore his gaze away. He turned slowly with a groan, rubbing his aching face with his hands, and walked away, his boots squelching sadly.

Still too weak to stand up, Lister watched him go. "Rimmer," he pleaded, helplessly.

"Just leave me alone," came the quiet, mournful reply as he disappeared into the dark.

Too miserable to try calling after him again, Lister's watery eyes sank back to the floor. All alone himself now, he absently bowed to instinct. 

Reaching out, he slowly dragged the backpack towards him, unzipped its waterproof cover, and fished out his Zippo and box of cigarettes. Drawing out one of the three remaining sticks with his lips, he was distressed to find that his usual ability to trick flick the Zippo alight seemed to have deserted him. With trembling hands, he attempted to strike the wheel with his thumb but still struggled to light up. He growled to himself, and tried again. And again. 

Exasperated, he gave up, hurling the cigarette into the water with a loud, frustrated cry that echoed around the cavern. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he wrapped his arms around them and shivered.

************

Rimmer wasn't sure how much time had elapsed and didn't much care. The tears of shock, fear and frustration had long since stopped, marked by the dried salty rivers that cut lines down dusty cheeks. 

Cradled by his crossed arms, his chin rested on his knees as he sat in the stillness of the dark, staring absently into the black void. His warm breath tickled his fingers with each exhale as he sat fixed in the reassuring cycle of repetitive nothingness.

In the back of his mind, he'd been trying to piece together his angry reaction to Lister. Yes, the cramped rumbling emanating from his belly constantly reminded him that he hadn't eaten for almost two days and his swimmy head was most certainly from their lack of water. But it had been something deeper than that. Something more primal to Rimmer than breathing in and out. 

In that flash of panic under the water, he'd realised that he hadn't wanted to continue the cycle of death and rebirth. The caterpillar and the butterfly. As a Rimmer, he'd learnt that Death seemed to follow him around like a bad smell; a thought that had terrified him ever since he'd learnt of his predecessors. But equally, he hadn't wanted to play the hero either. 

He didn't want to _become _anything or anyone. Just to be left to be himself. And he was afraid that one day, he wouldn't have that choice.

A beam of light thrust its way through the calmness of the dark and Rimmer blinked, shielding his eyes. The beam lowered, revealing Lister's tired and worn face as he stood over him. 

After a moment of contemplation, perhaps attempting to seek the right words, Lister simply bent down and extended his hand out to him. Wordlessly, Rimmer clasped his hand around Lister's wrist and allowed himself to be slowly and carefully pulled to his feet. 

The act didn't need words. It was a silent exchange of apologies and acceptances that both men understood.

Then, accompanied only by the sound of their boots slowly crunching over grit and rock, the two of them stumbled on together.


	9. Discovery

"What the hell do you mean, you don't like _Casablanca_?" Lister asked, incredulous.

The pair had been walking through the maze of caverns for almost two hours since the underwater incident, and in order to stave off thoughts of hunger and exhaustion they'd agreed to talk about their favourite movies. Unfortunately, the topic was all that they could seem to agree on.

Rimmer rolled his eyes as if the answer was painfully obvious. "Lister, what man in their right mind would give up everything he's ever wanted for some random woman he's never going to see again?"

Lister stifled a laugh. He couldn't help remembering the original Rimmer's decision to abandon the holoship _SS Englightenment _to save some chick he'd managed to get his leg over with. "Sure man," he giggled, "whatever."

Rimmer missed the sarcasm completely as his straining eyes seemed to pick up something of interest. His boots _schmucked_ across the muddy floor of the cave towards the wall and ran his hands across a thick, brown twist that snaked its way across the crags of the stone and down into the watery mud by their feet. He turned to Lister, who swept the beam of light from the torch across it. "Does that look like a root to you?"

Lister's eyes met his, a small smile tugging at the side of his mouth. "Plant life?"

"If there's a plant here, it's got to be getting light from somewhere, surely?" A dry laugh spluttered from Rimmer's lips. "We may be able to find a way out!"

The two men followed the root's path with renewed energy, eagerly squelching along the ever-narrowing tunnel. When the tunnel suddenly dropped down into a short, slippery mud slope, the pair didn't hesistate for a single moment, following the plant root with a dedication reserved only for the most desperate of men.

Once they'd reached the bottom, Lister cast the beam of torchlight around them, disappointed. It looked as though they'd dropped into a large, empty cavern that was about as bright as a TV weathergirl. They walked further into the cave slowly and carefully, the thick, oozing clay seeming to try and hold them fast with each step. A horrible stale sour smell clung to their nostrils that flared a lurching sensation in their gut.

It had been many years since Rimmer's last Biology lesson, but from the dark recesses of his memory he dragged out one nugget of information that had sunk in.

"Ok so the plantlife here has a water supply," he mused slowly, "but what on Io is it feeding from instead of sunlig-" The end of Rimmer's sentence was enunciated in bubbles. Two seconds earlier, he had lost his footing standing on something hard and brittle which snapped loudly as he pitched forward into the shallow muddy water.

Rimmer pushed himself up out of the sloppy mire and dry-wretched. The taste and smell were revoluting, seeming to grasp and throttle his uvula. Rimmer was about to let rip into a sequence of foul utterances when his eyes met another pair of eyes. Unfortunately these were not Lister's eyes. Unfortunately this would not be the magical moment that he spotted a gorgeous woman across a crowded room and their eyes met in the throes of love at first sight. Or at least a flare of lust. Unfortunately the dark brown eyes that Rimmer watched in morbid and disgusted fascination were staring, unseeing, back at him.

A distant sense of disgust from the strangely familiar snapping sound silenced Lister's initial reaction to laugh hysterically at Rimmer's fall. The noise had sounded so horribly familiar.

Lister turned to face the noise with the torch, throwing the beam of light onto Rimmer's trembling form, whose jaw hadn't closed for a full thirty seconds. The quivering of Lister's hand as the realisation dawned on what or who Rimmer was staring at, caused the torch to shake, sending light and shadows dancing and flickering across the ghastly white face. Rimmer scrabbled backwards onto his feet and let out an indistinct sound somewhere between a swear word and a wail. It had become painfully obvious what the plant was using for energy and it certainly wasn't sunlight.

It was Parker, Lister noted silently. Correction. It was Parker's head. The remainder of Parker's body, half-stripped of flesh and enrobed in the tatters of the black and yellow CANARY uniform was lying a good seven feet away. The body that Rimmer had tripped over only moments ago. Whatever this _thing _was, it had been substituting sunlight for flesh as its food of fancy. The only creatures that Lister had seen in the caves had been rat-like creatures that scurried across the stone walls in the middle of the night. A CANARY batallion must have seemed like an All You Can Eat buffet to this creature, and Lister had a horrible feeling that it may have developed a taste for this new found human delicacy.

The first words to break the silence came from Rimmer. Unfortunately they were neither profound nor reassuring.

"Smegging hell -"

Lister released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Parker. It's - it's Parker -" He ran a hand across his coarse tight curls, gripped the base of his rasta plaits and tugged.

Rimmer's lip remained curled involuntarily as he shook his head loosely. "I can't believe it."

"I know," Lister sighed.

"I was only playing cards with the guy the other week." There was a thoughtful pause. "He owes me twenty dollarpounds."

Lister stared at him, incredulous. "Hadn't we best be talking about something a bit more poignant?" he asked despairingly. "Like where the hell this smeggin' plant is so we can hail a cab for Scarper City?"

Rimmer scrambled to his feet, his eyes flitting around the gloomy cave. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Do you think it knows we're here?"

Wordlessly, Lister swept the quivering torchbeam around the nooks and crannies of the cave, jumping at every shaking shadow. "Can you see it, man?" his voice was just as unsteady.

Glancing around the dark stone walls around them, desperately seeking either the creature or a possible exit, neither of them thought to check what could be slowly slithering through the mud towards them. It wasn't until the plant's tentacle vines had snaked their way around their boots and tightened a deathgrip around their ankles that the two men realised that it had struck.

With a strangled yell, both men were wrenched up into the air, dangling upside down a good ten feet from the muddy cave floor. Lister had dropped the torch in shock, which had splatted back down into the clay casting a bright circle of light on the cave wall beside them.

Jabbering with fear, Rimmer attempting to haul himself upright in order to release his foot from the tight grasp of the green tentacle. He wished for the first time in his life that he'd actually committed to achieving his daily morning goal of 100 sit-ups before breakfast, as his stomach muscles cried mutiny and let him drop upside down once more.

It was then that he noticed the shadow cast on the wall in the cinematic glare of the torchlight. A huge bud-like mouth, around eight-feet across, opened with a low, gargling growl, the torchlight even kindly picking up the detail of the rows of thin, sharp teeth.

Rimmer gulped audibly. "Oh smeg."


	10. Burn

Rimmer trembled with fear as he watched the creature's silhouette snarling hungrily.

"Lister - " he squeaked.

Lister didn't reply. The thick vine holding him aloft upside down had provided a perfectly good view of the plant creature for himself. The huge blood-red head growled, revealing a row of razor-sharp teeth, dripping with drool. 

The two men blinked twice before somehow hauling themselves upright with renewed energy to scrabble desperately at the tentacle vines tightly wrapped around their ankles.

Realising that his current plan of action wasn't going to free him anytime soon, Lister's brain scrabbled for a new tactic. In a flash of inspiration, he fished out his lucky silver Zippo from his inside pocket. Despite the bleak situation, he allowed a small grin to surface on his features. Lucky indeed.

Hauling himself back upright, Lister grabbed hold of the tentacle vine holding him and flicked alight the Zippo underneath it. The plant squealed in pain, the tentacle thrashing and whipping him about until it finally let go. Despite the cushioning effect of the clay mud below, Lister hit the ground hard, hissing through gritted teeth as pain flashed up and down his spine. He'd had quite enough of falling from heights for one lifetime now thank you very much.

Rimmer however was having less luck. A second tentacle vine was helping to snare him, coiling around his midriff and pinning his arms by his sides.

"In your own time, Lister!" he cried sarcastically. As the vine tightened its grip and squeezed mercilessly, Rimmer wheezed, his chest feeling like it was caught in a car crusher.

Lister quickly hauled himself to his feet, grabbing the first tentacle that held his ankles and thrust the flame underneath it. The plant creature released a screeching cry and the first tentacle let go; Rimmer dropping several feet before halting against the tension of the second tentacle's grasp. 

Doubling its vengeance, the vine curled further up Rimmer's body until it reached his neck, the thin, tail-like tip teasingly garotting him. Lister scrambled over to the base of the second tentacle vine and put the Zippo to work, watching desperately as the fire quickly took hold. The plant creature cried out a second time, leaving Rimmer spinning in mid-air as the tentacle quickly unwound before crashing to the floor, gasping and wheezing for breath.

Snatching up the torch and stashing it in his jacket, Lister swung off his backpack and rustled through the contents. Whatever this _thing _was, it was clearly plant-like enough to be highly susceptible to fire. However, they could hardly fight it off with a single lighter. It would be like trying to put out a housefire with a water pistol. They needed something to feed the fire, something potent enough to cause enough damage to kill it, or at least allow them enough time to scarper. 

Lister pulled out the hipflask of hooch and spun off the top. He knew exactly the stuff to use.

Rimmer scrabbled backwards towards Lister, his jaw jabbering silently as more vines and tentacles slithered towards them. Lister tossed him the Zippo, which landed in his lap.

"Rimmer, man, cover me back! I need to sort somethin'," he called out. He fished through the backpack once more for the gauze bandages that Rimmer had previously used for his hands.

Pulling himself to his feet, Rimmer brandished the lighter before him, sweeping the flame from side to side. With each movement, the vines recoiled back at the heat of the fire. "Lister, if you have some clever plan up your sleeve I suggest you pull it out sharpish," he whimpered.

Lister admired his handiwork. He'd stuffed a length of gauze into the neck of the hipflask to act as a rudimentary fuse, creating a crude but hopefully effective firebomb. He gestured to Rimmer with his hand. "Rimmer man, the Zippo, gimme the lighter quick!"

At the brief moment that Rimmer thrust out the lighter to Lister, a huge thick tentacle swept across them, smacking each of them hard across the head and sending the pair flying. They skidded to a halt in the mud several feet away, entangled in the mulchy remains of another member of the CANARY batallion. Wretching in a mixture of shock and disgust, the two men scrambled to their feet.

"Smeggin' hell, I'm gonna need a whole lot of therapy when I get outta here," Lister whimpered, as he wiped off a slimy _something_ from his arm.

Rimmer patted himself down and cast his eyes desperately across the muddy floor. "Lister, the Zippo!" he cried, "I've lost the Zippo!"

Lister fumbled in his padded jacket and pulled out the torch, sweeping the beam across the floor, deliberately avoiding the rotting human remains to the right of him. "Smeg!" he yelled. "That's our trump card, Rimmer! Without it we're screwed!"

Panting with fear, the pair scrabbled around in the mud in a desperate attempt to locate the lighter. A flash of light reflected back in the corner of Rimmer's eye a few feet in front of them.

"There!" Rimmer thrust out a finger towards the tiny sparkle, a gesture that Lister followed with the beam of torchlight.

Keeping low to the ground to avoid unwanted attention, Rimmer raced over as fast as the squelching clay mud would allow before crouching down to reach for the lighter. A strange, squelching sound stopped him in his tracks as a thick green tentacle slithered towards him and reared up a few inches from his face. 

The dark green leaves on its end peeled back to reveal a deep purple bulb that exploded into a flare of colour as the flower opened. Rimmer froze on his haunches, hoping that the plant could only track sudden movements.

Lister tried to keep the shaking torchbeam as still as possible, but it still threw the enchanting flower into a dance of light and shadow. "Rimmer," he hissed desperately, "don't smeggin' move."

Keeping his head still, Rimmer cast his eyes down to the mud to his right where the silver of the Zippo flashed, reflecting the quivering torchlight. Returning his eyes to meet the flower's sightless stare, he gently leant towards the lighter, extending his arm out inch by painfully slow inch. 

Curling his fingers around the cool metal, he flicked open the top and struck the wheel. A tiny, hopeful flare burst into life, and as soon as he registered the light flicker in the corner of his eye, Rimmer wrenched it forward directly under the flower bulb.

The plant shrieked, recoiling immediately. Taking this as a perfect time to do a runner, Rimmer quickly hauled himself to his feet and half-turned to leg it. Yet he wasn't quick enough. A strange _thwip_ sound whistled through the air towards him and he felt a hot, sharp pain in the side of his neck.

As the flower reared back in agony and shrunk back into the shadows, Lister noticed Rimmer grunting in pain, bent-double. His brow furrowed as he ran squelching through the clay mud towards his companion to haul him upright.

"Rimmer, man, are you - ?" Lister's voice trailed off as he noticed a small green dart with a purple petal tail hooked in Rimmer's neck. Lister's nose wrinkled in disgust, instinctively wrenched it out as quickly as possible and throwing it away into the darkness.

Rimmer hissed between gritted teeth. "Do you mind, Lister? That smegging hurt!" His muddy fingers unfurled to reveal the Zippo nestled in his palm as he massaged his sore neck with his free hand. "I believe this is yours?" he grinned.

Lister mirrored his grin and slapped him playfully on the arm. "Nice one, man." He jogged back to his backpack where he'd stashed the hipflask.

Rimmer ducked down and followed quickly, secretly somewhat smug that he'd actually done something right for a change. He hissed again and rubbed his neck. Smeg, it was still really hot and sore, throbbing as if his blood had turned acidic. 

His legs began to drag slower and heavier as if the whole scene had reduced to slow-motion. A sudden lurch of nausea gripped his stomach. He could see before him that Lister was desperately fiddling with the hipflask, tipping it up and back again to soak the gauze bandages so that they would catch once the Zippo lit them. But the image warped and waned in his mind and he blinked heavily to restore clarity. 

He felt far too hot. Rivulets of sweat trickled down his temples and he began to wheeze in fear as he realised that something was terribly wrong. The blurry Lister turned to him and spoke but the words were muffled and indistinct as if he were speaking to him through thick glass. His brain fought to reply but the words failed to form as the edges of his vision began to fog and cloud black.

Lister's eyes flitted back and forth over Rimmer who stood swaying a few feet away from him. He'd asked him if he was feeling alright because he certainly didn't look it. In fact, he seemed to be doing a fantastic impression of a drunk student who had ventured one bevvy too far and now had the glassy look of someone who was about to hit the deck. 

Indeed, it was an imitation that Rimmer followed through with frightening dedication. Lister watched him shudder to his knees, his eyes rolling back in his head and flutter closed, as he pitched forward into the clay out cold.

It was as if the plant had sensed that the poison had overcome its prey and that dinner was served. Two dark green tentacle vines snaked through the mud towards Rimmer and began to curl around his inanimate body. 

Lister immediately sprinted towards him as quickly as the squelching clay would allow. With a primal snarl, he brandished the Zippo like a weapon, the dancing flame flickering before him. They'd come too smegging far to end this now. He was half-starved, dehydrated, injured and sleep-deprived after two days of hell, and there was no way in Hades he was going to let some smegging houseplant stop them from getting home.

Lister thrust the flame underneath each tentacle, watching sated as the fire spread greedily across the surface. The plant howled in pain, the tentacles whipping back immediately and retreated back into the dark. Lister quickly dropped to his knees and rolled Rimmer onto his back, casting the flame over his head so that his pale face danced in a flicker of light and shadow.

"Rimmer?" he cried. "Rimmer, man, can you hear me?" Lister pressed a couple of fingers to his neck, his skin hot and slick with sweat. Rimmer's pulse was racing, his chest rising and falling rapidly in a shallow wheeze.

A low rumbling growl emanated from the back of the cave as the plant beast snarled at them menacingly. Lister snarled back mockingly. He was ready to roll.

He flicked his Zippo alight and held it towards the hooch-soaked bandages that dangled loose from the hipflask. They caught surprisingly quickly and Lister recoiled slightly in shock. His face eerily uplit from the blazing flame, a grin inched its way across Lister's weary features at the plant that reared up before them.

He threw it a cheeky Liverpudlian wink. "Bye-bye, beastie."

Hurling the hipflask as hard as he could, he watched the arc of light stream away from him and towards the plant creature. The hipflask shattered on impact, unfurling a hot flare of charged fire directly underneath the plant's snarling mouth. The creature released a high-pitched squeal of pain as the licking flames engulfed it, illuminating the cave in a hot, bright light.

Lister needed no further encouragement. Pocketing his Zippo, he stooped down to pull Rimmer's heavy arm across the back of his shoulders and attempted to heave the taller man upright. Rimmer stirred briefly, surfacing from the dark black pool of unconcsiousness enough to groan raggedly.

Lister hauled him up to unsteady feet. "That's it, man. Come on. I _really_ need you to help me on this," he encouraged desperately as thick black smoke began to creep across the cave. He chest racked with coughs. "Don't make me haul your skinny arse all the way out of here, y'gimboid," he chided with little malice.

Through the swirling smoke that slowly choked the cave, Lister helped him through the tunnel and into the safety of the rock maze beyond. With the poison still pumping through his system, he knew that Rimmer didn't have much time.


	11. Light

Lister grunted as they limped slowly through the eerie smoke of the tunnel, his shoulder muscles throbbing with a sharp, aching groan. Rimmer was becoming less and less able to walk, and he was no light load at the best of times.

Lister, whose usual view on their lack of conversation was one of golden bliss, now found the silence between them unsettling. He'd much rather that Rimmer was throwing back insults about his personal hygiene or his guitar-playing ability. Hell, even jibes about how he'd never get Kochanski. Anything but the shallow wheeze that whistled in his ear, wordlessly playing out Rimmer's painful trip downhill.

A faint yet persistent light slid through the darkness as they stumbled on, and Lister followed it, unthinking. Turning a final corner, the tunnel opened up into a cramped cave emanating a strange glow and Lister's eyes narrowed as if deciphering a tromp de l'oeil. 

An yellow-orange shaft of light sliced downwards through the grimy darkness and pooled silently on the floor. Lister watched transfixed as the tiny flecks of dust danced in the light.

"Oh my god," he mumbled.

Hastily rearranging Rimmer's weight across his shoulders, he staggered forward as quickly as his load would allow. For the first time in two days, he stepped warily into the pool of light, casting his gaze upwards so that the sun's warmth caressed his face. A weary grin tugged at the dry, cracked edges of his mouth and a small laugh tumbled from his lips.

"Rimmer, look!" he cried. "There's an opening above us! We've found a way out!"

Rimmer offered nothing in reply. Instead, Lister felt his full weight lean against him before he slid down with a shaking groan towards the dusty floor. Lister quickly eased him down so that he lay on his back, casting frantic eyes over his body as he sank to his knees beside him. Rimmer's eyes were screwed shut, his furrowed brow dripping with sweat as his body twitched and shuddered.

"Rimmer -?"

The dying light of the day bathed them both in a warm glow, and Lister hissed as he studied Rimmer's neck properly for the first time. The puncture point was highlighted with purple and green swollen bruising against the rest of his now pale skin that glistened with a sheen of sweat. 

Rimmer's fingers twitched as he seemed to grab out at the flecks of dust that hovered and twirled in the light; odd, meaningless mumblings punctuating frantic pants through gritted teeth.

Lister mopped his face with the flat of his palm. He didn't have the first clue what to do. He needed the others and fast.

Hauling himself to his feet, Lister threw his gaze upwards. The hole certainly wasn't as far away as where they'd fallen, perhaps 15 feet above them, but teasingly high enough to remain out of climbing reach. 

Lister's eyes flitted across the ground where loose rock, sand and grit littered the floor. In fact, this was most likely where the original CANARY batallion had fallen; after which they'd probably wandered down the tunnel from where they'd just come, found the plant beastie, and the rest was gruesome history.

Lister cupped his hands around his mouth. "HELP!" he shouted up towards the opening, listening silently as his voice bounced and echoed around him before disappearing into infinity. "We're down here! Please! We need help!" he cried desperately, each word shadowed with echoes. 

He called out over and over again until his throat was raw, voice cracking with fatigue and despair. The light was slowly retreating, the pool of light on the floor that encircled him shrinking smaller and dimmer.

Lister's panic rose. They couldn't come so far only to fall short of the finish. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he panted for breath, fighting the instinct to submit to the familiar, choking blanket that threatened to sink down his throat. In a flash of inspiration, he hauled off his backpack and scrabbled through the contents, fishing out the broken radio transmitter with trembling hands.

"_Please_," he begged desperately. Whether he was addressing the others or the radio, he wasn't sure. "Please help us, _please_." He fiddled with the various switches and buttons with shaking fingers, hoping against hope to spark it into life once more. Yet the cold, lifeless plastic lay dead in his hands.

Lister sank slowly to his knees in the fading light, radio still cradled in his hands. He let the silence wash over him as he blinked slowly, tears dangling precariously in his eyes but refusing to flow. He didn't even notice when the radio slipped from his now loose fingers and onto the floor beside him.

Rimmer was still lying quivering and shaking on the dusty floor, mumbling incoherent ramblings with his eyes screwed shut. Crawling weakly across to join him, Lister mopped his brow gently. Rimmer flinched at the strange, new touch.

"You're burning up, man," Lister laughed quietly without mirth. Hands shaking visibly from the dehydration, he slipped off Rimmer's padded jacket and unfastened his top, feeling the body heat instantly flaring up from his now bare chest. "There we go, that's better, isn't it?" he reassured with a quivering voice.

For the first time in the last few hours, Rimmer's eyes fluttered open, meeting Lister's gaze unsteadily as if looking through him.

"Lister," he shuddered weakly. "I'm scared - "

Taken aback, Lister patted him reassuredly. "Shhhh it's okay, mate. You're okay," he soothed.

Rimmer's chest heaved as he wheezed, his eyelids blinking heavy and slow. "Can't make Z Shift today...scared they'll fire me...tell Todhunter...can't make it..."

Lister pulled his grime-stained hands down his face until they covered his open mouth. The poison was gathering momentum, now rendering Rimmer completely delirious. Lister fiddled with his sleeve unnecessarily, trying to mask his quivering lip with a frown as he blinked away a lens of tears.

"Sure, man," he managed quietly. "It's okay, I'll tell him."

Rimmer's eyes sank closed, his incoherent ramblings eventually disappearing into shuddered breaths. Lister sighed heavily, blinking quickly as his eyes rolled back to the opening above them. The sun had now retreated out of sight as the light dipped, now replaced with the eerily blue glow of the rising moon.

Lister sank down to lie down beside him and nestled his forehead against Rimmer's shoulder instinctively. He curled his arms around himself, his stomach lurching painfully, and he drew up his knees towards his chest to dull the sensation. 

Memories and regrets all whispered fleetingly through his mind. He would have given anything to be back on _Starbug _with the others. He wished he'd had the opportunity to make his peace properly with the old Rimmer. To apologise for mocking the way he used to moan about being dead. 

Lister shivered. As he lay there on the hard, gritty floor, deprived of food, drink and sleep, the one thought that resonated through his mind was how afraid he was of dying.

Dark eyes drooped closed to the woman he most loved in the entire world. She said nothing, merely stroking the side of his cheek reassuringly. He could almost feel the soft warmth of her hand on his stubble as he breathed her in.

He must have fallen asleep, he reasoned. When his mind dredged its way back to the real world, the early morning light had begun creeping into the cave once more, stretching into the cracks and shadows and arching up the stone walls. 

Yet Lister was sure it wasn't the dawn that had roused him from his dreams. It had been something else. Something fairly persistent.

_Beep beep beep. Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. Beep beep beep_.

Lister blinked. What was that noise?

_Beep beep beep. Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. Beep beep beep._

A flickering red light seemed to punctuate the rhythmic beeping. That sequence sounded ever so familiar.

_Beep beep beep. Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. Beep beep beep._

Lister pushed himself up onto shaking arms, scanning the floor around him before coming to rest on the culprit. His eyes widened slowly in realisation. It was the radio transmitter.

_Beep beep beep. Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. Beep beep beep._

Lister's breathing quickened as a small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. Dot dot dot, dash dash dash, dot dot dot. It was playing out an S.O.S.

_Beep beep beep. Beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep. Beep beep beep._

It was then that she heard her voice calling his name. He'd thought it had been his dream at first, but no. Her voice was tangled with others. Familiar voices all calling out his name. _Their _names.

Lister attemped to pull himself to his feet but his shuddering legs cried mutiny and he sank down to the floor once more. Desperate, he dragged himself across the gritty floor into the pool of light and cast his gaze up to the blazing sky.

"Help!" his feeble voice croaked before he coughed raggedly and tried again. "Help!" he cried louder, his voice growing more persistent through the sudden surge of adrenaline. "We're here! Help us! Help!"

He blinked slowly as the dark silhouettes of various faces cut into the circle of light above him, calling his name distantly. Exhausted, he sank back against Rimmer who was still wheezing faintly.

"Made it," he breathed, his eyes drooping closed in a relief that couldn't be expressed. "We made it."

The rest played out like a dream. The harness had snaked down towards him and he strapped in the inanimate Rimmer before watching him being hauled up to the surface. Once he was safely up, the now-empty harness lowered for him once again. He too strapped himself in to be pulled out of the dark, oppressive caverns and up into the light.

Once he'd reached the surface, he reached out weakly, overwhelmed with happiness and relief when he was caught either side by Kryten and the Cat. His eyes scanned his surroundings, squinting feebly in the fierce sunshine.

"Rimmer," he mumbled, "is he okay?"

"He's safe, sir," Kryten soothed. Lister had never been so glad to hear his reassuring, sing-song tone. "The medi-team are looking after him now."

The mechanoid gestured over to Rimmer who sat flanked between two members of the CANARIES medi-team. He seemed to be receiving more needles in his arm than an 80's rock star. Red puffy eyes blinked slowly, underlined with dark circles that stood out against the sheen of his pale, sweating skin. His gaze met Lister's for a fleeting moment before he offered a weak smile. Lister returned the smile. He was going to be okay.

Lister's vision then shifted, his focus now on the female form that stood at a distance from the rest of the group.

"Kris," he breathed.

She returned his smile, her eyes and cheeks wet with tears as she hugged her arms across her chest. Maybe this would be it. Maybe the fact that they'd almost lost one another would convince her to forget _her _Lister and take a gamble on him.

Lister's smile broadened as the rest of the CANARIES either slapped him heftily on the back, tapped his head or ruffled his hair in congratulations. Maybe the last few days, despite how hellish their experience had been, would serve to build up their reputation in The Tank as hardened, heroic figures, not to be reckoned with.

Hutchins elbowed Murphy with folded arms as they surveyed the scene unfolding before them. "Hey, did you see 'em snugglin' up to one another down there in that little cave of theirs, eh?" he winked. "That Rimmer even had his top half off, you know."

Murphy sighed. "Yeah, yeah, alright, you smegger," he replied reluctantly. "Bloody couple of poofs. I guess we knew it would happen in the end." He reached into his inside pocket and fished out a couple of dollarpound notes, handing it over to Hutchins sadly. "I'll give you the rest when we get back to the _'Dwarf_.

Lister glanced back to Kochanski, aghast. She regarded him strangely with a small smirk, an eyebrow cocked questioningly.

His eyes screwed tightly, frowning as he winced.

Then again, maybe not.


End file.
